Fire Emblem: Awakening — Ties of Fate
by Rainy Days With Tea
Summary: A woman wakes up in a field, surrounded by the remains of a merchant family and under arrest. With no memory of her past, nothing can absolve her of a crime she has no memory of committing, and nothing can prepare her for the events in store. A loose retelling of 'Fire Emblem: Awakening'.
1. Chapter 1

**DISCLAIMER: I claim no ownership of any character, plot idea, settings, or even my own socks. All of the above belong to Nintendo, in conjunction with Intelligence Systems. Except my socks. Those technically belong to my mother. I guess the My Unit technically belongs to me, but only technically. I am a poor college student, please don't sue. **

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><p><strong>INTRODUCTION: Welcome one and all to my second serious attempt at fanworking! I tend to write fanfiction about things that I'm very passionate about, and I really, really like <em>Fire Emblem<em>. It's fantasy, and fantasy and science fiction have always (and probably will always be) been my cup of tea. So it's time to break out the old metaphysical typewriter and get to work. **

**That being said, you may consider this an alternate universe/adaptation of _Fire Emblem: Awakening_ from the point of view from the female My Unit. There will be violence, gore, some dark themes, and mild sexual themes. **

**That being said, this is going to be a long one, so please: sit back, relax, and enjoy a nice cup of tea. I mean, it is in my username, isn't it?**

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><p><strong>Premonition<strong>

**Invisible Ties**

Thunder was always her forte.

She could remember snippets of her childhood, the memory of hours spent mouthing the words in her mother's tome quietly to herself, as if making the shapes with her mouth would somehow imbue her with their power. True, she had eventually gained a passing mastery of the other elemental magics (scribed dutifully into her mother's tome, neatly coded script giving way to the crosshatched chicken scrawl she was convinced no one save herself could decipher), but the magnetism of thunder magic reverberated in her very bones.

'Storm incarnate.' That was what her faceless mother called her. A tuning fork for both destruction and creation. Life and death. Good and evil. Naga and Grima.

She clenched both sword and tome in opposite hands. Thunder rolled from her fingertips, from her nigh inexhaustible source of mana. The sickly glow of dark magic painted the air purple. Beside her, in counterpoint, a faceless man in blue and white roared his triumph and rose a gleaming broadsword to strike. But the caster of dark magic was there before him, leaping into the air and casting a cascade of purple flames to the ground. She and her compatriot leapt in opposing directions, away from the magically birthed fire. From her fingers, thunder rolled, striking outward and lancing toward the body of the evil man.

Again, however, he was far faster. The man wreathed in purple was already on the ground by the time her spell made contact with the ceiling. Again, his purple flames dashed outward, throwing her blue compatriot into a support pillar hard enough for his body to shatter it to chips.

Without thinking, mana worming and pooling as her comrade clambered to his feet with the help of his broadsword, she cast one of the more potent thunder spells in her repertoire, let hit coalesce into a writhing ball of energy, and forced its path to intercept that of the dark magic, which was busily making its way toward her felled friend with all the strength of a meteor.

The resulting explosion was enough to throw her, her friend, and the enemy in opposing directions. Moaning, tome and sword forgotten several meters away, she came to a skidding halt almost halfway down the antechamber's length, prostrate upon her back and coughing blood. She heard someone cry out her name, then: "No! This can't be how it ends!" But she was alive. In pain, but alive. The shockwave should have pulverised organs, broken bones, used her as a conduit for loose magic and blown her up. But her resistance to magic had always been notoriously high. She had been lucky to escape it with nothing more than raw, scraped skin and a mouthful of blood.

Down the antechamber, where she had begun the fight alongside her friend and ally, the din of metal against metal met her ears. The battle that raged beyond the barrier was soft, muted, existing in its own pocket universe. This clash of battle was much closer. Propping herself up onto her elbows, she blinked weakly as her friend hacked and slashed at the enemy, and watched in ever mounting horror as his blows were deflected by dark magic, a magic that she feared to call upon.

Her friend noticed her weak stirrings.

"Just... Run!" He grit out, deflecting and dodging. "Run while you can!"

What kind of_ (friend, tactician, wife?) _would she be if she abandoned him, her_ (friend, commander, husband?)._

The enemy laughed with glee, renewed his attack with fervor. "Fools!" Thundered the enemy. "Struggle all you want! You cannot unwrite what is already written!" His blows of magic exploded over the defence of his broadsword. Her friend's strength was flagging, and she couldn't even pull herself off the ground.

"You can't escape it!" continued the enemy, redoubling his efforts to slay the man in blue. "That's why it's called destiny!"

_We're not pawns of some scripted fate. _Hadn't she once said those words? In denial of the evil man?

She could not let the man in blue die and prove her wrong.

Strength gone, mana weakly surging, she struggled to both feet and lurched unsteadily toward the battle at hand, pausing only to pick up her smoking, half ruined tome. True, many powerful sages and sorcerers could conjure magic to do their bidding with only a thought; she believed that with enough concentration, she too could hold such mastery. However, such magic was beyond her in her addled state. So she was left to drunkenly leaf through her tome, letting the magic of each page guide her hand.

Her friend looked at her, desperation and excitement coloring his face.

"On my mark!" came his war cry, a sentence she felt he had said many times before.

The enemy turned, eyebrow raised, as if he hadn't expected her to rise so quickly from the explosion, if at all. Hand outstretched, mana writhing with magnetism in preparation for the spell at hand, she offered the man wreathed in purple one parting word:

"Checkmate."

The magic literally exploded from her fingertips, arcing forward like a bolt of lighting sent from the heavens. True, the magic was weak (at least, weaker than her previous castings), but it still caught the enemy in his chest, just as her comrade-in-arm's gleaming broadsword caught him through the shoulder, nearly cleaving it from his body. Chest heaving, she stumbled to where her friend stood, tome tumbling uselessly from weak fingers.

They had won.

"This isn't over."

She looked beyond the man in blue, stared in abject horror at the evil man. He kneeled on the ground, consumed in bubbling, miasmic energy. His body bled of mana, pooled it into shape, intent. She knew he was going to cast before he said his own parting words to them:

"Damn you both!"

That amount of mana pooled into a spell could only mean one thing. It was as if she had been electrocuted; the charge of his dark magic zapped over her skin, jolted her to awareness and action, made her aware of his intent to cast.

She didn't think. The dark magic surged toward her comrade in a miasmic flare of purple and black. She lacked the mana to counter with her own spellcraft. So she did the next best thing:

Her shove caught the man in blue by surprise, eyes going wide and mouth dropping in question as her arm caught him in the chest and forced him aside. He had not seen nor sensed the evil man's casting efforts; his back had been turned trustingly to the felled enemy. She let out a moan-turned-scream as the full brunt of the evil man's magic caught her full in the chest with force like a hammer striking an anvil, and she was the anvil. Again she skidded along the flagstone floor, taking the brunt of the blows with her bony joints and shoulders as she rolled and tumbled like an out of control barrel.

She didn't know how long she lay there, feeling dazed and battling against the dark as it slid through her blood like slime. She became aware only as the man in blue knelt at her side, picked her up by the shoulders and lifted so that she was half in his lap, head leaning against his breastplate so she could survey the ruined antechamber, the ruined sorcerer who disappeared into energy, body spent.

"Are you all right?" he inquired. She couldn't bring herself to speak, so she nodded.

His smile was weary and relieved.

"Thanks to you, we carried the day." She looked away from his smiling face to look at her splayed legs, burned and bleeding. "We can rest easy now."

Her whole head throbbed, tunnelled, became wrought with crawling red. Her friend was still saying things—of comfort, reassurance—but she was no longer listening. It was not for lack of trying; the throbbing in her skull became so powerful that she could barely hear his words. She panicked, grabbed at his hand, the ruins of her pants, praying that it would go away.

That was when her friend noticed that something was wrong. His face entered her line of sight, tunnelled and layered with red. Why was there so much red? Why was her grasping hands beginning to channel mana that she did not have to spare? Why was the voice in her head whispering evil things?

"At long last." She heard that. She heard the voice in her head incanting. She felt herself stand on legs that, under any other circumstance, would not support her.

"What's wrong?" The question was so innocent. Her hand was thick with mana. The voice in her head was bringing magic to life, a magic she wanted no part in.

She knew that she had the ability to cast magic without a tome. It was too bad that it took possession to cement that hypothesis as fact.

There was apprehension—not quite fear. Not yet—in his eyes as he too climbed to his feet, sweat beading his brow and body lax. Even now, when threatened, he would not attack her. Where did his faith end and his conscience begin? Was he really that good of a man?

Protesting internally, screaming against a voice that would not let her from its grasp, she listened to his panic-fuelled protests, a measly "Hey, hold on—" before she cut his inquiry short with a dagger of thunder to the chest.

Thunder was always her forte. It was only fitting that she killed with it.

Her friend, comrade, a hundred other words, stumbled backward, hand held around the dagger that still protruded from his chest like a macabre flag. Vision clear, head no longer pounding incessantly, voice silent, she stared dumbstruck at her hand, fitted glove still crackling with excess magnetism.

_Oh no._

Even dying, her friend was not condemnatory. He looked at her earnestly through fading blue eyes.

"This is... not your—" He collected himself, groaning with pain. "Your fault." Another pause, longer this time. His breath came in ragged gasps. She couldn't find the words in her to call for someone to fix her sin.

"Promise me..." he ground out, fighting death to absolve her, impart further wisdom. "Promise me that you'll escape from this place."

How could she? She had murdered her most trusted ally, the man she put above herself since... since... Forever? As far back as her memories stretched.

"Promise me!" His voice was harsh, full of command. How could she say no to him?

"I will." Her voice was weak, throaty, thick with unshed tears.

That seemed to be what he was waiting for. His smile was more of a pained grimace.

"Please... go."

Those were the last words he ever said to her. The man crumpled to the ground, life extinguished at her hand, as a voice that sounded suspiciously like her own cackled triumph.


	2. Chapter 2

**Author's Note**

**After some technical difficulty (on the part of FF, I think...) I have finally posted this piece of shit. Interspersed with a marginally improved social life (since finals are finally...finally... winding down), editing my book, and procrastinating by playing SSB4, expect to see a weekly to biweekly update schedule. Once I nail it down (hopefully by next update) I'll be sure to include it in the author's note. **

**That being said, stay tuned to my tumblr for updates on how this affectionately titled piece of shit is going, and relax in your comfiest chair with a cup of tea, my friends. **

**Happy reading!**

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><p><strong>Prologue<strong>

**The Verge of History**

She drifted, numb, slowly to consciousness.

"Chrom, we have to do _something_."

That was the voice of a girl, or a particularly high pitched woman. It burrowed into her brain and made her want to claw her ears off, just to get it to stop. But she didn't move. Her brow furrowed; _Do something about whom? _she thought exhaustedly. Certainly not her. She was just...

Wait. What _was _she doing?

"What do you propose we do?"

That was not the high pitched young woman (_Thank the heavens, _she privately thought). That was a man, vowels and consonants punched and pronounced like a member of the aristocracy. His voice sounded familiar, enough to bother her thoughts. Had she fallen asleep—

Her head throbbed mercilessly as she struggled to remember. It felt as if a thousand knives were being thrust into her skull without end, only stopping when she was ready to die to avoid it. Instead of screaming like she wanted to, the young woman let out a pitiful moan and stirred, waited for the pounding to abate so she could resume thought. She _had _to know what happened to her.

Judging by the lack of question in her direction, the aristocrat took no notice of the young woman's distress, even as she fought to open her eyes. It was a monumental task, but she managed, blinking slowly up into the sunlight that burned her eyes and made her wince. Two distinctively human shapes leaned above her, invading her limited line of sight; they blotted out much of the sun, to which she was eternally grateful.

"I... I dunno."

The voice of the young woman returned, piercing yet soothing. Again the young woman resisted the urge to groan; instead, she let herself grunt her discomfort and nestle deeper into the knoll of grass that she found herself sprawled in. A rock dug uncomfortably into her lower back, but she didn't care. She was _comfortable_, or as comfortable as she could be. Why was her shirt so sticky? Why did it smell like wet metal? Blinking, the young woman stared uncomprehendingly up at the two people above her, confusion beginning to give away to discomforted anxiousness.

That got the nobles to realize that the young woman was awake. The woman of the pair (really, she was more of a girl) bent down further into the stranger's slowly clearing line of sight. Pale blonde hair was done up in high pigtails, framed by a lace veil or headscarf of sorts. Was the woman a cleric? She looked barely old enough to be an apprentice. To compliment the yellow of her hair, the girl wore yellow, brown, and white. She really hoped they would be introduced. It would be rude to refer to one's rescuer as "the yellow cleric".

"I see you're awake now," said the man, still retaining his respectable distance above the young woman, even from his bent state. He wasn't as close to her as the girl was—the girl was practically in her face—but his voice was still soothing, assuring, as present as if he had been as close as the girl was.

"Hey there," the yellow cleric said gently, voice dropping mercifully in pitch.

"Hi," the woman returned dumbly, softly. Her voice sounded weak, hoarse, as if she had spent several nights screaming at the top of her lungs without respite. The taste of iron was especially thick in her mouth, almost disgusting. She resisted the urge to spit—she _was _in the presence of nobility, after all.

"There are better places to take a nap then on the ground, you know," said the man, admonishing, the hint of a joke in his easygoing smile.

Perhaps the young woman had garnered a head wound before she had been knocked unconscious. In her wildest dreams, she would never have said to nobility, "I usually prefer midair cat naps," had she been in full possession of her faculties. Or perhaps she would have; there was little she knew about herself at the moment.

The man laughed. Now that her vision was clear, she could see that he was very, very blue. Not in temperament, but in, well, everything else. His hair was blue. His eyes were blue. The only thing that wasn't totally blue was his outfit; that was silver, white, and blue. Why did he look so familiar? Why did the girl look so familiar? Why couldn't she remember her own bloody name?

"Give me your hand."

His almost-order broke her out of the spiraling thoughts of panic in her brain. Smiling gratefully, the young woman extended a hand upward.

It was when she had lifted a hand to take his that she noticed that her wrists were bound.

_Oh, this certainly doesn't bode well. _

"I don't—" she began uncertainly.

"Rest easy, friend," said the man—_Chrom, _the young woman thought, struck with a moment of complete surety. _His name is Chrom_—as he moved to gently haul her to her feet. The binds around her wrist were rough, as if they had been scrounged quickly from wreckage. But they were effective. Whoever the knot tier was, they were extremely adept at their job. As she staggered to her feet, vision blanking as dizziness overtook, she noticed that the scent of wet iron was especially thick on the air.

She knew that smell.

"Blood?" she quipped, sparing a glance at her surroundings.

She stood on the very incline of a knoll, shirt tacky with drying blood. The blue haired man named Chrom held her by the join of rope between her wrists, preventing her from both falling and running. The little cleric in yellow was the young woman's height, and gazed on in worry, holding tight to an ornate staff that denoted her station as cleric. Up on the hill behind the young woman and her saviors-cum-jailers lay an overturned cart, smoking with the remains of a flame recently extinguished. Just by smelling it, without needing to get any closer than she already was, she could tell that the destruction was magically wrought.

The stranger looked at her saviors.

"I didn't do that, did I?" She pointed for measure, at the overturned cart and blackened corpses that lurked inside. It didn't bother her that she knew on a deeply instinctual level that the fire was magically wrought. There was a heaviness in the air, a charge against her skin. The only one who seemed aware of it was the little cleric. _Not surprising, _the young woman found herself thinking. _She's got talent. _The fact that the deaths of those in the cart was brought on by magical fire palliated the young woman's unease. She knew that magically birthed fire tended to burn longer than natural fire. The deaths of the merchants had to be quick and painless. From her position, the young woman saw no horse, but that didn't mean its own corpse was out of view. She only hoped it had escaped the carnage.

_Why do I know so much about magic?_

"That's what we're trying to find out," said Chrom, sparing the young woman's thoughts. He tossed a glance over his shoulder "Some of us, however, are overly cautious."

"I wasn't aware that your lands were so dangerous to warrant the arrest of an unconscious, bleeding woman," the young woman retorted dryly.

"Oh, you're not bleeding anymore," piped the young blonde. "I took care of that!"

Almost as immediately as the cleric had said the words, the young woman winced as fresh pain bloomed in her side and forehead. It felt as if she had been run over by a cart, then stitched back together wrong. The young cleric looked apologetic.

"Well, most of it, anyway," she amended.

The injured party smiled what she hoped was a reassuring smile. "It's okay. I can tell you did a fine job." She then looked at the impassive third figure who Chrom had looked at before.

Standing even taller than Chrom (a man who's shoulder was level with the top of the young woman's head), this man was arrayed in bright, silver armor, polished to a sheen. His brown eyes almost glared at her, condemning her for some crime she did not commit. Or maybe she did, and just couldn't remember. There was a lot she couldn't remember at the moment.

"Although," the young woman continued, just a hint of frost in her voice, "some of the party wishes your talented cleric didn't do such a fine job."

The enormous knight didn't give her the pleasure of coloring as the young cleric blushed at the praise. Instead, he said:

"I would never wish such harm on an individual, milady."

Sniffing derisively, she looked back to Chrom, the only individual she knew. Well, sort of knew. Why was he so bloody familiar, and she couldn't even remember her own name?

"No matter," Chrom cut in diplomatically. "What matters is, are you all right?"

Finally, some politeness. Momentarily distracted by a small flock of tiny birds, she managed to smile another crookedly reassuring smile.

"I think so," she said. "Thank you, Chrom."

_Oh wait. That was weird. He never introduced himself. _

Chrom's eyebrow shot up.

"Oh? You know who I am?"

She rubbed the back of her head. Or attempted to. With her hands bound, all she could manage was a nervous rub at her hairline. _I have no idea who these people are. And here I go, opening my big mouth. _

"No…" she said, dragging out the sound.

_Because _that _doesn't sound suspicious at all. _

"It just..." She struggled for an explanation that just wouldn't come. "Came to me, I guess?"

_Bravo. Now they'll really think you're a murderer. _

Chrom didn't seem to be bothered any. If anything, he looked pleasantly bemused.

"So what are you doing in this field here, then?" he asked. "Lying in the grass just a few meters away from a highway robbery?"

The stranger paused for a minute, wracked her aching brain for any other answer besides: _H__is name is Chrom _and _S__top bothering me__.__ I'm hurting, you dolt._

"I'm not entirely sure about that, either," the young woman admitted.

Again, Chrom's pleasant bemusement only grew.

"Tell me then," he continued. "What's your name, friend?"

The young woman only shrugged helplessly and offered her bound hands to him.

"Your guess is as good as mine."

_Shut your mouth, already. If you keep this up, scary knight over there is going to behead you for __this__ trouble. _

The little yellow cleric immediately leapt to attention, knowledge shining in her blue eyes and bright smile. The woman decided she liked her.

"I've heard of this!" the cleric piped up, almost raising her hand in excitement. "It's called amnesia!"

The woman looked at the young cleric, both pleased with her knowledge and confused. However, she wasn't about to ask the cleric what 'amnesia' meant. That would make her seem even less intelligent than she already seemed. However, the knight who had took it upon himself to place her under arrest chose that moment to speak again.

"It's called a load of pegasus dung," he said, impassive as he stood beside his equally imposing charger. The woman would be lying if she said she wasn't intimidated.

She wasn't intimidated enough, however, to keep quiet.

"It's the truth!" the young woman snapped bitingly. "It's not my fault if your head is jammed too far up your armored—"

"Enough!" snapped Chrom. "Frederick, what if she is telling the truth? What kind of Shepherds would we be if we left her here, alone and confused?"

So the young woman had one advocate for her cause. Possibly two, if the little blonde cleric's healing of her was anything to go by. That still didn't explain why she was still bound.

"So if you don't think I'm a danger," hedged the woman diplomatically, "why don't you just let me go?" She proffered her hands expectantly.

"I would advise against such action, milord," said the vaguely menacing knight named Frederick. Judging by the sour look on his face, he didn't miss the young woman's scornful mutter of, "Of course you would." He merely continued as if she hadn't said anything.

"I would not let a wolf loose amongst our sheep."

Chrom looked between the woman and his fellow, heavily armed shepherds (_How dangerous _is _this place? _she thought as Chrom disappeared into his thoughts. _First magic-wielding bandits, now this? Maybe it would do me good to get away from these people while I still can..._)

Before the young woman could even move to flee, Chrom continued:

"We'll take her back to town and get this sorted there."

That got her to stop edging slightly up the knoll. The 'amnesiac'—she really did have to ask what that meant, embarrassment be damned—immediately leapt on the defensive; strange energy began to gather in her gut, ready to explode outward in defense of her person.

_Well, that isn't weird__ at all__._

"Why?" the young woman challenged. "So you can lock me up like that good knight wants?" Matching the knight and his horse with a glare of her own, she spat: "No, thank you. I would rather take my chances with your organized bandits."

Chrom's expression once again changed to that of bemusement.

"And how do you suppose you'll accomplish that, friend?" His eyes drifted tellingly to the rough rope bonds tied tightly around her wrists. The stranger hadn't even noticed that she had begun to twist her hands, in a vain attempt to exploit some sort of weakness. All she had gained from her efforts was chafed skin and more blood on her.

Not deterred in the slightest, the woman rose her chin haughtily.

"I'll find a way," she sniffed. "I'm... crafty."

That got a laugh out of all parties, minus the grump of a knight and his equally ill-tempered horse. Ears burning with embarrassment, the woman refused to relinquish her aggressive and haughty position, even if it did look ridiculous.

"We won't formally arrest you, if you don't have anything to do with the bandits," assured the little cleric.

Again, the stranger proffered her bound and aching wrists, this time to the girl.

"So I'm to assume that this is a traditional greeting here?" The woman returned her ire to Chrom. "Don't I have a say in where I get to go? Or have I magically lost that right as well?" She pointed with either index finger at the overtly cautious knight. "For gods' sake, _he's _already determined me guilty!"

"Don't fear Frederick's unsmiling face," assured Chrom.

"I don't fear Frederick's 'unsmiling face'," snapped the woman. "I fear his actions, _milord_."

That one word, spat like poison, slapped Chrom in the face as effectively as her palm would have. His face steeled. The pair gazed coolly at each other, a game of visual chess at play.

The stranger had an inkling that she was very good at chess.

"We'll discuss this at town," he repeated, voice cool and unfriendly. "We'll hear your case there, after we report this crime to the local garrison."

And that was it. Chrom placed a hand to the stranger's shoulder, half guiding and half forcing her up the knoll to the road. Head held high, hands bound before her, the young woman passed the overturned cart. She pretended that the smell of burnt flesh and burnt wood didn't bother her, didn't bring up shadows of memories that gave her more headaches than answers.

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><p>The stranger kept her composure on her forced march. The knight Frederick had retaken his mount; by the look the horse was giving her, it seemed that her original guess that the horse was as friendly as its master was exact in its assumption. It would glare at her, and she would glare back until either she or it broke eye contact. She had lost the seven times they had locked eyes. After breaking away in a huff for the eighth, she began to count blades of grass, or listen in on the hushed conversation. Such distractions gave her plenty of time to contemplate her surroundings.<p>

The country was—for lack of a better term—beautiful. Almost picturesque. The road was dirt in this backwater, with wildflowers and knee high grass that smelled sweet. The sun beating down warmed comfortably, but she was still cold. The mild climate didn't bode well for her. Maybe she hailed from a land of hotter temperatures.

Still, she couldn't deny the beauty of such land, cold or not.

Chrom still stood behind her, no longer guiding but overseeing. His frostiness had faded after an hour's walk, and now he joked with the girl beside him, called her "Lissa". At least the young woman didn't have to refer to her as "the little blonde cleric", or any variation thereof. But she didn't dare open her mouth again. She was afraid that Frederick would stick her with that lance of his, or the horse would 'accidentally' trample her.

_How much further to this town of theirs? _she found herself wondering. _I think I lost feeling in my __legs__ fifteen minutes ago. _

Occasionally, Chrom would offer her a waterskin. She would wipe her mouth with the sleeve of her coat, and they would return to their almost companionable silence. At least she had no fear of dehydrating.

The walk gave her plenty of time to take stock of the items on her person. The shirt she wore was loose and flowing, stuck to her side where the mystery wound remained half-closed by Lissa's brief healing. The herbal scent of some medicinal paste all but assaulted her nose; it was almost as pungent as the scent of blood and stale sweat. The coat she wore was thickly lined, double collared, and hooded. When she inspected her bound hands, the sleeves (gold trimmed and black with some sort of geometric design in mauve up the sleeves) gave way to half-gloves, held in place by a single hole which her middle finger went through. Interwrapping belts supported her pants and acted as an underbust of sorts. The pants she wore were darker than her shirt and buttoned down the legs, kept in place by the slightly dusty boots on her feet.

She must have been a woman well suited to traveling in dangerous country, if the appropriated sword—logically, it had to belong to her. It looked too cheap to belong to a noble, or a knight—hanging over Chrom's back was any inclination.

Eventually, the woman grew tired of the quiet, the hushed japes, counting the seconds, and struggling with a migraine in hopes of remembering her past.

"So," she began, voice thick with levity. "I assume I am to be your prisoner, then?"

The silence seemed to have done Chrom well, for he laughed and clapped a hand to her shoulder, as if they were very old friends. The gesture niggled at the back of her mind, and she squinted through the pain of another migraine as she tried to remember. "Hah! You'll be free to go once we've determined that you're no enemy of Ylisse."

_That sounds like a country. _The young woman attempted to turn her head, to avoid the draw of those same tiny birds (who were nestled in a tree and whose name was on the tip of her tongue), and look Chrom in the eye without falling.

"Is that where we are?" she asked. "Ylisse?"

By the affirmative smile both Chrom and Lissa gave her, the young woman supposed that she was exact in her line of questioning.

_Point to me, then. _

Of course, the grump riding the horse was nothing but a shower of negativity on her internal parade.

"Someone please pay this actress," he said, dour, deadpan. "She plays quite the fool! Who has never heard of the halidom? I must admit, the furrowed brow has even _me _half convinced."

"Perhaps because it's the truth, Sir Frederick," snapped the young woman. As Frederick opened his mouth again, she said, "Don't start, milord. I don't magically become deaf when you stop talking to me." She looked from Chrom, to Lissa, to Frederick and his horse. "If I was a true enemy of your halidom, it would be foolish for you to say your names when in earshot of me. What if I escaped? Told whoever my countrymen are that you three took me prisoner?"

"What makes you think you'll escape, milady?" Frederick sounded threatening. The young woman took notice of the tightening of his hand around his lance.

"Frederick, please," said Chrom. That commanding note was back in his voice.

"Milord." He relinquished his grip and settled back into his horse's saddle with a glare in the young woman's direction.

Once hostilities had simmered to a minimum, Chrom returned his attention to the young woman.

"Where you now stand is the Halidom of Ylisse," he explained. "Ylisse is ruled over by our Exalt, Emmeryn." He gestured to himself. "I'm Chrom, but you already knew that." He gestured to the little blonde cleric. "The delicate one is my sister, Lissa—"

"I am _not _delicate!" Lissa exploded. Judging by her vehemence and Chrom's chuckle (even Frederick the Grump cracked a smile), this was a sentiment off brought up and questioned.

"—And the man in charge of your preemptive arrest is Frederick the Wary."

The young woman rose an eyebrow, half mocking. " 'Frederick the Wary' ?" she repeated. "That seems to be a bit of an understatement." Again she lifted her bound wrists to drive the point home.

"And yet it is a title I hold with pride," said Frederick.

Again the young woman muttered, "Of course you do."

"Someone among us has to have some modicum of caution," he countered.

"You're lucky we found you when we did," said Lissa before the young woman could retort with something obscenely rude. "You would have bled out if you didn't wake up on your own. If the bandits who torched that wagon hadn't realized that you were alive…" She trailed off, leaving her grisly sentiment unspoken.

"I'm grateful," the young woman said. "But at this point, I think I'd rather take my chances with the bandits…"

She trailed off, only just realizing what Lissa had said just before.

_Wait. They _think _I bloody killed someone?!_

Incensed, the young woman pointed at Chrom. "Wait a second, you: are you convinced that I'm _not _responsible for that massacre back there?"

Chrom looked back to Frederick the Wary.

"Frederick is overly cautious—" he began.

"Chrom, this goes beyond 'overly cautious'," said the woman, shaking her hands. "I can't remember much, but I can assure you that I am not the enemy here!" Turning to Frederick, somehow keeping her balance as she walked backwards, she continued on her tirade.

"Sir Frederick, would I—in my extremely wounded state that warranted a quick healing from Lissa here—be able to burn a moving cart down? And then leave myself at the scene of the crime after stabbing myself?" She turned her attention to Chrom once more. "Going back to your name throwing earlier, what smart criminal would do something that glaringly stupid?" She threw her hands outward, angered. "I mean, who tends sheep in full arm—"

With a tiny scream, the young woman fell backward, hitting her head on the ground once more. Dazed, blinking double and triple shapes from her eyes, she accepted the hand from both Lissa and Chrom.

"Are you all right?" Lissa asked, gently holding her head in her hands and inspecting the back of her head.

"I have a terrible headache, and my ego is extremely bruised. Possibly broken." The young woman offered a smile. "Otherwise, I'm undamaged."

Lissa let out a thoughtful 'hmmm' as she inspected the back of the young woman's head. "I wouldn't be too concerned. If it still is bothering you by tonight, tell me _immediately_."

The way Lissa said those words conveyed the level of her passion for her craft. The young woman couldn't help but smile.

"So," she continued, dusting off her back, or attempting to. "Why are you tending sheep in full armor?"

Chrom smiled. Now that she was properly facing them and only the slightest bit dazed, the young woman could tell that each one of them wore some form of armor. Chrom's shoulder and arm was protected by a sleeve and silver armor. A cape capped the regal outfit off, as well as the enormous broadsword hanging at his side (_Why isn__'__t it gleaming? _she found herself thinking irrationally). Lissa's outfit was far more moderate for a noble lady. Her underskirt and petticoat consisted of a great bronze cage that made her legs look like caught birds. Frederick was a league onto his own, bedecked in his gleaming silver armor that matched his horse's. These 'Shepherds' certainly were no where near dressed enough to be destitute farmhands.

"It has its dangers," said Chrom with a smile. "As Frederick the Wary said: someone among us has to have some modicum of caution."

"Let Naga forbid the idea of caution when it comes to you two," said Frederick, exasperated, uttering it like a prayer.

The young woman couldn't help but smile. A group of birds again traversed the sky above her head, tiny and delicate.

_Robins, _she thought. _They're robins. _

They resumed their march, the young woman rolling her shoulders to alleviate some of the strain on them, flexed her fingers to get blood flowing. Lissa's incessant line of question provided a distraction to the pain in her upper body.

"So you don't remember anything," she said.

"Not a thing," said the young woman, trying to rub a cramp out of her thumb and failing. "Don't get me wrong, I remember how to walk, talk, eat and all that. I just don't know my name, where I'm from, or what I look like. All minor details."

"Well, from what my tutors have told me, amnesia can be temporary."

"I'm sensing an 'or' in there, Lissa," said the young woman jokingly.

Lissa winced. The young woman hadn't expected her line of questioning to be exact. A nodule of worry lodged itself in her chest.

"Lissa?" she hedged.

"One of my tutors told me about a farmhand—only about twelve—who had taken a hoof to the head," she said haltingly. "He... couldn't even remember how to talk when he woke up."

_That's a pleasant way to end the conversation.__ But I asked._

Instead of offering her condolences to a boy she didn't even know, the young woman went for levity.

"Lissa?" she asked.

"Yeah?"

"Do I look twelve?"

It took a minute, but when Lissa and Chrom laughed at her terrible joke, the young woman couldn't help but smile and laugh as well. It almost made her forget she was a prisoner.

The scene was ruined by Lissa's gasp of shock.

"Chrom, look!" she cried, pointing further up the road. "The town!"

Turning from her laughing comrades, the young woman looked on at the town she supposed was to be her courtroom. It wasn't anything grand; there were storefronts, a small temple to who the young woman guessed was Naga, houses and bridges that spanned aqueducts and canals. From their distance, she could hear screaming, see a handful of buildings ablaze.

_I guess that's where the bandits went, _she mused.

"Damn it all!" exploded Chrom. "Blasted bandits! They must be the remains of that camp we routed three days past." He gestured to Lissa and Frederick, but not to the young woman. "Lissa! Frederick! Let's move!"

It was a terrible time to be thinking of oneself, but the young woman couldn't help it. What did his lordship expect her to do while he ran the bandits out of town? Sit on her thumbs? Take up knitting?

"Hey, wait! What about me?" she protested hotly.

"Yes, what about her?" echoed Frederick.

For once, the young woman was happy that the grumpy knight was agreeing with her.

"Is she on fire?" bit out Chrom impatiently.

"No, milord."

"I most certainly am not," the young woman snapped.

"Then she can wait," finished Chrom.

"Aptly put, milord," agreed Frederick.

Dumbstruck, mouth hanging agape, the young woman watched as the three dashed toward town as quickly as they were able, leaving their prisoner behind, forgotten. It wasn't until they were out of earshot that she realized that they had indeed abandoned her. Not to mention, her hands were still tied.

"Hey, wait!" she shouted. "What in the hell am I supposed to do if a bandit comes calling?"

Of course they couldn't hear her. It just felt better to shout.

Heaving a frustrated breath, the young woman shouldered her jacket a little firmer on her shoulders and began her attempts to free herself in earnest.

Several minutes later, wrists bloodier and attitude degraded, the young woman flopped defeatedly onto the ground and screamed her anger to the uncaring heavens.

_The bloody idiots are going to get themselves killed, _she ranted, digging her teeth into her bonds. _And I'm going to be left on this bloody road to rot. I didn't kill those merchants, but they're going to find me guilty of murdering a knight and his __pampered __charges if I don't. Get. Loose! _

She accidentally bit through her bottom lip in her fervor, and screamed a particularly filthy curse to the legitimacy of one's parentage.

Just as she was considering beating her hands to pulp against the nearest rock to free them, the young woman became aware of a painful lump in her side. That got her to stop struggling and writhing on the ground like a woman possessed. From her movement, she could determine that it had even edges, so she ruled out rock; attempts to shift only dug it deeper into her back.

_It's in your coat, stupid._

Standing with difficulty, berating her stupidity, the young woman watched in surprise as a tome fell from an inside pocket of her jacket with a decidedly heavy _thump_.

"How did I not know that was on me?" she asked no one.

Once again falling to her knees, curiosity reigning, the young woman pried the cover open with difficulty. It was roughly the thickness of her closed fist held vertical to the ground. The pages in the front half of the book were neatly scribed in a language she could half remember. The latter section was a mismatched conglomeration of letters that she instinctively knew how to decipher. It was heavy, almost the weight of a good sized rock, and hand bound and pressed.

_It's a spell__book, _she realized, hands gliding over the pages, feeling that unknown part of her beginning to writhe and come to attention. There was talent inside of her, ready to be used. _That__'__s how I knew the fire before was magic. I could feel its leftover charge._

Letting instinct guide her hands, the young woman flipped to a midsection of the tome and scanned the pages, took in the diagrams and language anew. She knew the spell she was looking for on a deeply instinctual level, as if some of her memories were hovering just out of sight, guiding her from the shadows without hurting her.

Confident in her choice, the young woman held her wrists apart as far as they would go (which, granted, wasn't far, as Frederick was a fantastic knot tier) and whispered the incantation.

A small tongue of fire leapt from the pages if the book (a poorly chosen source, she realized, as the page in question would degrade and burn as power was sapped from it) and wrapped around the bindings between either wrist. It took only a second for the magically wrought flames to make quick work of the rope. Crying out as blood rushed back into her numb extremities, the young woman took a moment to collect herself and then lift the tome in arm, careful of the slightly charred page. Grunting at the weight of it, the young woman quickly uncovered the pocket in question and slid the massive book back into place.

As quickly as the weight was there, it was gone.

Taking a moment to marvel at the wonders of her coat—even shaking it out to ensure the spell book remained where it was—the young woman looked toward the town and, briefly bemoaning her sore legs, took off running.

_You should be running away, idiot, _thought the young woman. _Sir Stab-first-ask-questions-later will be more than happy to remove your head for you. __This could be your one chance for escape. __Why are you doing this? _

The young woman kept running.

It took her almost twenty minutes to reach the outskirts of town, by which point her legs were cramping mercilessly and her head was pounding anew. Out of breath, the young woman wasted no time removing her heavy tome from its weightless pocket. In the time it took her to figure out that she was a mage with some seriously untapped potential and burn her bonds to ash, four more buildings had gone up in flames. Bandits in thick furs ran from house to house, carrying anything of value that they could find. Female screams permeated the air as bandits carried away the village women as effectively as lifting a sack of potatoes over shoulder.

It didn't take her long to get into trouble.

"Hey, boys!" she cried, hand flipping to a random page. When the bandits noticed her, she grinned wolfishly.

"Didn't your mommas teach you that burning first, asking questions later was ill mannered?"

Before they could reply, or even raise a weapon to her, the young woman blew them back with a gust of wind and a shouted word. They shrieked as they made contact with a burning tavern, which collapsed upon them with the force if their impact.

Heaving a breath, the tome tumbled from her hands as she fell to her knees, suddenly without strength.

_Too much mana at once, _she berated herself, again instinctually knowing what was wrong. _Don't pass out. _

Groaning, the young woman somehow found it in herself to pick up her tome and continue her jog through town. She passed fleeing townspeople, dead bandits, but no Shepherds.

"Where the hell are they?" she hissed out.

Rounding a corner, a simple fire spell flickering from her fingertips to light a bandit's furs on fire, the young woman almost ran headfirst into Frederick's lance.

"How did you—" he began, stopping his lance less than a few centimeters from the young woman's eye. His eyes locked onto the tome tucked under her arm, and the lack of rope around her bleeding wrists.

"Where was that?" he asked.

"In my coat," quipped the young woman. "Search better next time, Sir Frederick the Grump."

Before he could run her through or his charger could trample her underfoot, the young woman doused another bandit in fire and slid neatly around Frederick and his horse. Leaving him to fend for himself (he was doing a particularly marvelous job at doing so), she dashed between burning buildings, pulled villagers from flames, and lit bandits alight with a flick of her wrists and a shouted incantation.

Who knew that lighting a small fire was as simple as thinking (or shouting): "Fire!"

Cornered by two bandits, the young woman was deaf to the reinforcements who snuck up behind her and grabbed her around the waist. Screaming with surprise and anger, the young woman turned as much as she could in his grasp and brought the entire weight of her tome down on her kidnapper's head. There was a solid _crack_ as his skull broke and his neck caved under its weight. Blood flew from his broken mouth and ears. His eyeballs popped from their sockets. Gagging at the scent of pulverized matter, the young woman fell to her back as her kidnapper's arms spasmed and scrambled backward, clutching the murder weapon to her chest as the bandits around her roared in outrage.

Tossing both hands outward, shouting the first incantation that came to mind, the young woman called lightning to life from her hands. So fueled by desperation and fright, it possessed such an otherworldly heat and intensity that the bandits were either evaporated or blown backward by the force.

She looked at her hands, watched as excess mana and magnetism from her lightning attack crawl along the lines of her palms and the tips of her fingers, and fought the burning sense of deja vu that accosted her.

"Huh," she wheezed out in a breath, head light and legs weak. "I guess thunder is my forte."

Holding tight to her tome, the young woman watched a robin hop along the broken cobblestone road in search of food.

Robin.

_Huh. That__'__s as good a name as any._

Leaping to her feet, renewed with the idea of a name, the young woman—who had christened herself Robin—headed further into the burning village. Bandits lay on the ground here, both cleaved and run through by an enormous sword. One bandit was partially decapitated, head held on by a flap of skin, nothing more. Robin winced at the carnage, but followed it. Intuitively, she knew that the road paved by the dead would lead to Chrom and Lissa.

It did. In a plaza connected by several bridges, Chrom battled with six bandits, who wielded axes, swords, and lances as cheap as her own sword, the one that still lay over Chrom's shoulder. Lissa hid behind a broken piece of building. In her hand she held a long clerical staff, ornate with the position of her class. There was a determined, almost fearless look to her.

Casting her intuitive magic, thunder rolled from her fingertips, tossed a bandit from his feet and threw him several feet, into another bandit and over the bridge's banister into the aqueduct below. Chrom, his broadsword deep into the chest of a bandit, used his booted foot to remove his sword and use the momentum to swing at the missing bandit at his back. Confused, sword hitting nothing but air, Chrom locked eyes with Robin, at the tome in her hand, and the lack of rope around her wrists.

He cracked a smile.

"Crafty indeed, my friend," he said, waving a hand in greeting.

"Hey there!" greeted Lissa with an excited wave of her hand.

Jogging to where Chrom stood, massive sword casually planted point-first into the ground, Robin nodded her greeting to the sibling pair.

"Sorry about breaking out and all," said Robin, tipping her chin at her sore wrists. "I couldn't just sit on my hands and do nothing, especially when I have some skill with a tome I didn't even know I carried."

" 'Some skill'?" echoed Lissa. "That was amazing!"

Now it was Robin's turn to blush with embarrassment at the praise.

"Anyway, I think there's an old adage about 'safety in numbers', or something like that," continued Robin. "And surrounded by fire-loving bandits, I think that you can use as many numbers as you can get."

Chrom again chuckled as the sound of a horse cantering over cobblestones reached their ears. Chrom didn't move to bring his sword to bear, so Robin didn't ready another spell. She merely let her mana pool in her hand as Frederick came riding over the bridge that Robin had come over only minutes before.

She would be lying to herself if she said she wasn't considering setting the grumpy man on fire.

"Milord," he said, barely glancing at Robin. "The bandit's leader is positioned outside of the temple."

Robin looked toward the dove-grey building of stone, the tallest building in the burning town. It was connected by a short bridge from the plaza they now stood, guarded by two archers. Several hundred meters away, an enormous man bedecked in red and brown stood, axe in hand and woman held captive at his side. Another two archers stood in flanking positions, bows nocked expectantly.

"The eastern bridge over the aqueduct," she said. "That leads to the temple."

"How do you know that?" asked Frederick.

Robin offered her hand, pointed toward the bridge.

"From what I saw, this town built itself up on top of the river," she explained. "The temple is obviously a central gathering point, whether it be in times of hardship or times of plenty. It's logical that the town will connect on all fronts to its focal point: the temple."

"So what do you propose?" asked Chrom.

"First: give me my sword," said Robin. "I don't have the mana to spare on any more big spells, and I'm going to need it for what I have in mind."

Chrom handed over Robin's sword, without paying heed to Frederick's quietly hedged, "Milord." Placing the tome back into its weightless pocket, Robin gripped her sword by the hilt, felt the wrapped grip almost meld back to her hand. Possessing four sides, forged from a weak quality bronze, the metal looked brittle and prone to breaking. It was a cheap sword, but it had undoubtedly served her well, judging by the care she kept by honing its crossed blades to a dangerous edge and rewrapping the grip in supple leather.

"Thank you, Chrom," she said. "Second: I need you—" She pointed to Chrom. "—and you—" Another point to Frederick. "—To lead the frontal assault over the north bridge."

"And what of Lissa?" asked Frederick. "Surely you don't expect her to go with you."

"In fact, I do."

"Over my—" began Frederick, tightening his grip on his lance once more. Even the horse looked angry.

"I'll go," said Lissa strongly.

"Milady, I strongly—"

"I'm going." Lissa crossed to Robin's side, chin held high in defiance.

"We'll flank the bandit leader," continued Robin. "Clear the way for you to move in."

"And what of the hostage?" asked Chrom.

"Don't worry about her," she assured. "I'll take care of her."

"Remember, milady," said Frederick to Robin in passing. "We face practiced thieves and murderers. They will grant us no quarter. Understand that this is a battle; kill or be killed."

Robin smiled disarmingly as she readied her sword in one hand and patted the area where her tome lay beneath her coat.

"Thirdly, milords," she said. "Please call me Robin."

And with that, Robin was off, Lissa following in tow as the pair made their way over the eastern bridge and back into the burning sections of town. This section was mostly burned, devoid of villagers and bandits. But Robin did not relax her guard. She held out her hand to stop Lissa.

"What's wrong?" Lissa asked, holding tight to her staff for strength.

Robin rose a finger to her lips and gestured for Lissa to look at the smouldering ruins of buildings. They were perfect locations for an ambush. Surely some houses still had valuables within them?

The only warning Robin had of the ambush she knew was coming was a war cry, wordless and wrathful. Pivoting, shoving Lissa behind her protectively, Robin swung upward from the hips, using her pelvis as a fulcrum to drive her sword into the side of one bandit wielding an enormous war axe. Ducking beneath the blow, kicking his weapon away as it tumbled from fingertips, Robin followed Chrom's example from earlier and used her booted foot to unbury her sword and send the dying bandit backward. An incantation was already in mind to deal with the other two fur-cloaked men, who were making their way down the alley at a fast clip.

"Duck!" she shouted in warning to Lissa.

Lissa dove to the cobblestones as thunder arced from Robin's free hand, connecting with either bandit, using their weapons as conductors. Their dying screams echoed in the alley before they were cut silent. Robin teetered on her feet, unsteady and wrung dry of mana.

"Here," said Lissa, digging into a pocket of her dress. From a hidden pouch she withdrew a small phial filled with some sort of potion. It was vaguely brown in color, like dirty water or mud. At Robin's hesitant look, Lissa continued: "It's a concoction. It'll help you replenish your mana quicker."

Eyebrow still skeptically raised, Robin dutifully took the concoction, unstoppered it, and paused to smell it.

"Eugh," she groaned, gagging at the pungent scent of herbs and something that vaguely smelled of feet. "This better work," she continued dryly. "If not, I can't take out those archers."

Lissa nodded confidently. "Don't worry. It will."

Robin resisted the urge to pinch her nose shut to force the concoction down her throat. Closing her eyes, she grimaced as the potion—which tasted as foul as it smelled—slid down her throat like slime. Coughing, resisting the urge to retch, Robin handed both phial and stopper back to Lissa.

"Wow," said the cleric, placing the empty phial's stopper back on and putting it back in the pouch in her skirt. "That's the first time I've ever seen someone get that down in one go. Miriel threw it back up the first time."

Grimacing out a smile, Robin gestured for them to move forward.

"I can see why," she deadpanned.

Both she and Lissa shared a quiet chuckle as they continued onward, keeping to the shadows of the eaves of houses. Before long, they slunk across the bridge that lead to the rear of the temple, and crept around its side.

From her vantage point, Robin could see the bandit chief and his hostage. Both archers beside their chief, one aiming at the head of the crying woman, the other at Chrom and Frederick, vacillating back and forth between the two. Turning to Lissa, Robin whispered:

"Go around the other side. When you see my signal, grab the woman and run."

Lissa looked more confused than scared.

"What's your signal going to be?" she asked.

Robin smiled wryly.

"You won't miss it. Trust me."

Lissa nodded determinedly and quietly crept around the temple's corner, leaving Robin alone to contemplate her recently discovered tactical mindset. However, she didn't dare delve into the reasons behind such a natural reaction. She couldn't afford another migraine now, not with four lives in danger.

Crouching, Robin sheathed her sword at her side (both sheath and sword were comfortably nestled in one of the many interlocking belts at her waist) and removed her tome from her coat. She didn't even balk at it's significant weight; it didn't bother her how quickly she became used to holding it before. Perhaps it was muscle memory, more deeply ingrained in her than regular memories?

A stab of pain in her forehead immediately removed her from that train of thought, and put her back to finding the proper spell in her book.

Robin spent little time thumbing through her tome; she came across the spell she needed toward the end of the book, in the mess of crosshatched scrawl. She could feel her mana returning to her, and for that she was grateful. At a casual glance at the spell she wanted to cast, it would eat through almost all of her usually available mana.

_Why does it feel like this won__'__t be the first time I pass out from overextending myself? _she wondered idly.

Confident that she had the spell memorized, Robin snapped the book closed and leaned slightly out of the shadows to see Frederick and Chrom in the middle of the north bridge, reluctant to get closer to the leader of the bandits and his threatened hostage.

"Here, sheepy sheepy sheepy!"sang the bandit mockingly. "Come to the slaughter!"

Robin, fingers loose and hand upraised, whispered the incantation she had committed to both memory and book:

"_Descend from heaven, O storm of flame and brimstone._"

Above the temple, thick and ominous clouds gathered, rumbling with the threat of thunder. But the spell that Robin was working was far more in depth than a light show. Eyes closed, concentration lining her face, she continued:

"_Descend, O Pyre of Micaiah. Descend!__"_

With a whistle, the clouds over head split, sending a fireball crashing down upon the archer farthest from her, the one holding his nocked arrow to the hostage's head. The bandit didn't have time to scream; incineration was instantaneous.

With a shout of surprise as the fire burned itself out and left nothing behind but a scorch mark, the bandit leader spun, removing an axe from his belt and holding it threateningly to both Frederick and Chrom. Lissa was quick on her feet as she ran from the shadows—understanding the signal and utilizing the distraction—and grabbed the woman by the arm. Before the archer or leader could comprehend that their hostage had been snatched, Robin was immediately on her feet, sword at the ready.

An arrow caught her in the shoulder, burying itself into bone. The pain was almost enough to make her drop her sword, but she wasted no time in rolling to avoid a veritable hail of projectiles. The archer closest to her had recovered quicker than his chief, and had made himself busy trying to end the life of the woman who had taken his comrade's.

Robin paused only to break the shaft off and toss the nock and fletching to the side. Shoulder burning, face set in a tight grimace, Robin charged the archer as Frederick and Chrom moved in on the leader.

"You dare defy the will of Garrick?" proclaimed the chieftain, brandishing his axe. "Come, my little sheep! Let me end your delusions!"

Another arrow grazed the tip of Robin's ear. Ducking, she rolled once more and, in a show of finesse that belied her apparent inexperience, ran the archer through the neck with an upward stroke of her blade.

Turning, Robin took stock of Chrom, Lissa, the woman, Frederick, and the chief (whose name was apparently Garrick)'s positions. Frederick had returned to the north bridge, holding it single handedly against no less than eight bandits, a figure of war upon his great charger. The horse seemed to be taking its anger out on her by trampling its enemies underfoot. _Better you lot than me, _she thought. Chrom had engaged Garrick the Sanctimonious Chief, matching him blade for blade. The axe—again cheap and ill fashioned—clanged its own doom against the massive, ornate broadsword wielded by Chrom.

_Falchion, _thought Robin, with the same certainty that possessed her over Chrom's name. _That__'__s it__'__s name. _

Groaning aloud, headache and lack of mana bringing her to her knees, Robin blinked wearily at the battle, too weak to even lift her sword. It clattered uselessly to her side, a harbinger of not her death, but Garrick's.

With a scream of anguish, the leader of the bandits was felled. Robin, half slumped on the ground, found herself manhandled to a more upright position and felt that same slimy concoction make its way down her throat. Coughing, sputtering, Robin felt her strength slowly return to her, clear her mind enough to see the three standing around her. Well, two. Lissa was once again crouched before Robin, hands on her shoulders to steady her.

Robin smiled weakly.

"We have got to stop meeting like this," she said, accepting Lissa's assistance as she staggered drunkenly to her feet, leaning heavily on both the girl and her sword for support.

Chrom laughed. Either she had taken a blow to the head, or she was dead, for Robin swore she saw a slight flicker of a smile cross Frederick's face at her jape.

"Wow, Robin," said Lissa, awestruck. "Swords, tactics, and tomes? You're amazing!"

"She's right," agreed Chrom as he sheathed Falchion at his side. "You're certainly no helpless victim."

Blushing again, Robin offered both the girl and Chrom her most winning smile.

"I know," she said. "I told you I was crafty."

"Crafty indeed," mused Frederick. "Did you sit on your name from the moment you woke?"

Robin, too tired to rise to the bait, merely shrugged and pointed to a flock of robins nesting in an untouched tree. "Your robin population is extremely dense in this part of Ylisse," said Robin. "And they like freedom. It was only fitting that I name myself after them."

Lissa looked crestfallen. "So you _didn__'__t _remember your name?"

Robin laughed. "No, Lissa. I didn't. But at least it's something to call me."

Chrom laughed as well. "That it is," he agreed.

Confident that she would not fall unsupported, Robin stepped away from Lissa and looked down at herself. Her shoulder still stung from the untouched arrowhead. The sword at her waist and tome in her coat, the naturalness of either weapon, bespoke of intensive training with either of them. It almost made her want to wonder who she was before she woke up in the field, without her memories, an amnesiac (after some thought, she determined that 'amnesiac' had something to do with memories). But the threat of a migraine made her shy away from such thought.

"So," she mused, locking eyes with Frederick, who looked awfully ready to truss her up like a hog and throw her over the back of his horse for the journey home. "Am I still under arrest?"

Frederick looked ready to say yes, but Chrom had other ideas.

"You fought beside us, guided our swords in battle, risked your life," he said. "That makes you a friend and ally."

"Milord," began Frederick. For a moment, Robin was sure he was going to clap her in irons without his lord's permission. However, he continued: "Did you notice that the bandits spoke with a Plegian accent?"

_Now I__'__m sure that__'__s a country, _thought Robin as Lissa bid her to sit on the ground and move her coat from her shoulders to rest around her elbows.

"Frederick, my bag?" asked Lissa politely.

Frederick immediately dismounted and removed a leather satchel from the saddlebag of his charger. He deposited it beside Lissa (_How is his armor so neat? _thought Robin, awestruck at Frederick's still spotless visage, despite the blood and dirt that caked her, Chrom, and even Lissa) and moved back to his position by Chrom, but did not remount.

"I assume Plegia's some sort of rival state?" inquired Robin as Lissa pulled her shirtsleeve away to probe the arrow wound with some sort of pinching tool. Choking on a scream, Robin almost jerked away from the source of the pain, but as quickly as it had started, it ended. Lissa held an arrowhead between the pinching needles, covered in her muscle and blood.

Robin barely resisted the urge to vomit.

As Lissa dressed the wound with neat linen and what she called a "vulnerary paste", Robin returned her attention to Chrom and Frederick.

"You're not that far off the mark," said Chrom, once Robin had regained her wits. "Plegia is Ylisse's western neighbor. They're quite fond of sending 'unofficial' raiding parties over the border to antagonize us into action."

"Sounds like a friendly lot," said Robin. She had begun to notice the villagers beginning to creep toward the temple, realizing that the threat was gone and their saviors were still there.

Lissa scowled as she tied off the bandage on Robin's shoulder. "Yeah, but it's the villagers who suffer for it!" she snapped, helping Robin back into her sleeves. She removed a length of cloth from her bag and, despite Frederick's protest of, "Milady, that's your Valmese shawl…" tied a knot in the soft fabric and draped it around Robin's neck. With Lissa's help, she was able to rest her injured arm comfortably in the makeshift sling.

"I'm sorry if I bleed on it," apologized Robin.

Lissa waved her hand dismissively. "You needed it more than I did," she protested.

The scent of steam filled the air. The villagers, content that the four crouched in the square meant their ravaged homes no harm, had begun to control the fires that still raged. Many had formed bucket chains stretching to the aqueducts. Robin marveled at their sense of camaraderie and loyalty to both one another and their home.

"Why don't you go and meet with Plegia's head of state then, if their 'unofficial' raiding parties are so detrimental?" asked Robin.

"The Exalt doesn't wish to antagonize Plegia," said Chrom, a hint of bitterness in his voice.

"Besides," said Frederick with a very, very, _very _slight smile. "That's what we're here for."

_Shepherds indeed, _thought Robin as an elderly man approached them. _But not of sheep. Of people. How__…__noble. _

"Milords! Miladies!" the oldster proclaimed once he was close enough. By the deference his people showed him and his significant age, Robin immediately pegged him as the town's leader. "We are but a simple village; please allow us to feed and house you for tonight!"

The idea of resting her feet and getting a hot meal (and hopefully a bath) immediately made Robin perk up.

Frederick, however, had other plans.

"Thank you for your generous offer," he said diplomatically. "But we must press on for Ylisstol with all haste."

Lissa, who was as weary as Robin, completely ignored Frederick's declaration.

"Dark meat for me, medium well, no salt in the soup—" She trailed off as Frederick's words cemented themselves in her head. "Wait, we're not staying? _Frederick__—_"

"No buts, milady."

"It's nearly dark!"

"And we will camp when it's dark." Robin heard the smile in Frederick's voice. "I thought you wanted to learn to live off the land, make your bed out of twigs, and eat bear meat?"

Scowling good naturedly, Lissa said, "Sometimes, Frederick, I really hate you."

"A burden I will somehow bear, milady," said Frederick.

Unable to resist her urge to laugh, Robin looked to Chrom, who was also wiping tears of mirth out of his eyes.

"You have quite the stern lieutenant here," she said, choosing a more diplomatic word out of the vast bank of choices at her mercy.

Lissa grumbled as the oldster retreated back to his people.

"I can think of a few _other _words that can describe him better than 'stern'," she said snappishly.

With renewed laughter, Chrom said, "Frederick only _really _smiles when he's about to bring down his axe."

"Or let his horse trample possible murderers," choked out Robin, laughing until she was red in the face.

Frederick, however, was not pleased with the conversation's turn.

"You do realize that I'm still present?" he asked.

"Oh yes," said Lissa.

"Completely knowledgable of that fact," laughed out Robin.

"Never a doubt in my mind that you never left," wheezed Chrom, nearly bent double from the force of his laughter. He recovered after a moment.

"Robin," continued Chrom, in a far more serious vein. "You've fought today for Ylissean lives. You are an able tactician, and I would be honored to have you join us as a Shepherd."

_Well, that was a quick shift from __"__murderer__"__. _

"Chrom…" she began.

"Milord," said Frederick. "We still aren't sure if she was with the Plegians in this skirmish." He looked at her. "She wears the robes of their dark mages, for Naga's sake."

Robin looked down at her coat, warm and magical.

"It's a warm coat," was her only defense.

"Frederick," said Chrom, "the Plegians here in Southtown would have recognized her as one of their own."

"There could be another raiding party that knows—"

"Enough," said Chrom. "I won't damn her for being Plegian. I'm not my father."

The last part was said in a whisper, so low that Robin missed it. She had unconsciously offered her hands, awaiting to be clapped in irons as the pair exchanged words.

"Milord," continued Frederick, "I know you're heeding the counsel of your heart, but what of your mind?"

"Frederick, we would be idiots to turn her away, throw her in the gaol until she's executed. She's a fantastic tactician. We have brigands and Plegians prepared to bloody Ylissean soil. Maybe she can help us prevent that. Besides," He said this part loud enough for Robin to clearly hear. "I believe her story, even with it's oddities."

Finally. Absolution of the mysterious crime. Robin felt her knees go weak with relief. She wasn't prepared to break out of gaol and find her way to another country. She didn't even know where Plegiawas, except west.

"Thank you," she said earnestly.

"So, will you join the Shepherds?" asked Chrom.

The only articulate thing Robin could do was nod.

With a smile, he again clapped her on the good shoulder, as if they had been friends for years. The gesture had an immense measure of comfort, enough to make Robin smile wide with relief.

"Shall we be going?" asked Frederick, both horse and master almost glaring at Robin. Almost.

"Yes," said Chrom, offering Robin a smile as the four made their way from the burning village of Southtown. "We've quite a way to go before we reach Ylisstol."

Robin groaned.

_Oh no. More walking._


	3. Chapter 3

**Author's Note**

**Hello all! This chapter is lovingly dedicated to my lung (the right, pneumatic one) which kept me from both typing and publishing it for a full _three weeks! _Hah. All kidding aside, this was a very time intensive and draining chapter, to which illness can be partially blamed. The other? Pure laziness and a procrastinative nature that has gotten me through life with many a panic attack (In that, Lissa and I are one in the same). That being said, this is the first time I have posted an unedited chapter like. Ever. If there are any comments, concerns, vaguely worded death threats, please feel free to share. I don't bite!**

**Now sit back with that probably cold cup of tea of yours (or top it off) and enjoy!**

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter 2<strong>

Robin's previous rumination about the beauty of Ylisse, along with any private wonderings in regards to the country's culture had all but vanished the longer she tramped along the hells forsaken countryside.

Her three traveling companions (who could loosely be called jailers, as Robin very much doubted she had free reign of the country quite yet, if ever) seemed to be made of sterner stuff than she. Lissa's petulant grumbling had eventually subsided to petty glares directed at Frederick's armored back the further they moved away from Southtown and into the hinterlands. Chrom's bracing hand on Falchion warned of an impending clash with bandits, despite his wisecracking jokes every half hour or so (the subject of which was usually Frederick, or Chrom's own sister). The Ylissean trio did not falter once in their march across what felt like the entire continent. Robin's answers had devolved from one word replies to tired grunts the deeper they plunged into unfamiliar backwood. More than once, Robin had tripped over her own feet, accepting Lissa's supporting arm only after she had fallen and considered laying there until she died. Which she hoped was soon. She didn't know there was a limit to human soreness; if there was, she had certainly passed it.

Such a walk was more than enough time to take stock of exactly how hurt she was. Robin was certain the arrow wound in her shoulder was keen on reopening every half hour or so. Falling on her face had earned her a few undignified scrapes along her unprotected palms and cheeks. Most importantly, however, were the blisters on her feet that seemed to sprout new blisters every few miles or so.

If she concentrated really hard enough, Robin could hear them multiplying.

_Perhaps I have a concussion, _thought Robin, wondering idly how she was still walking. _I__'__m simply imagining blisters, that__'__s it. _

So deep was she in her internal, rambling monologue, that Robin hadn't realized quite how dark it was getting, or that the group was intending to stop. Drifting pleasantly in her hazy-half awake daze, Robin started as Lissa shouted:

"I _told_ you it would be getting dark soon!"

Robin returned to the plane of normal thought just in time to see both Chrom and Frederick turn to the youngest member of the party (or assumed youngest; Robin didn't even know what her hair color was, let alone her age). Finally taking note of the changing light—a pastel twilight that slid steadily down toward total night—she realized that it was just past sunset.

_We walked all the way through sunset? _she marveled.

Robin then became aware of the tingling numbness in her legs and groaned. If not for Lissa's arm over her shoulders, she was nigh convinced that she would fall if Lissa would move.

Beside her, heedless of Robin's plight and her position as support, Lissa continued: "And there are _bugs _out! Nasty, flying, crawling—" The young cleric trailed off in a choking splutter, forgetting that she was the only thing keeping Robin from a swift meeting with the forest floor, as she swatted at her face, coughing and spluttering as she tried to force an insect out of her mouth.

Pitifully moaning, Robin slid to the ground face first as her legs caved in on themselves, closing her eyes and inhaling dirt and grass. She had never felt so comfortable before. She waved off Chrom's helping hand as it dug into the fabric of her coat. "No, no," she said to the dirt. "I'm fine. Leave me here to die, please."

The hand disappeared with a petulant grumble, but Robin didn't care; she was _comfortable_. Lying on the ground was almost as refreshing as drinking the foul concoctions that Lissa was more than happy to lob at Robin. Inhaling the scent of fresh, loamy earth, Robin unashamedly moaned her happiness at the very feeling of being vertical. Above her, she heard some faint chuckling, a disparaging snort from the grumpy charger and its equally grumpy master, and Lissa's valiant efforts to thwart the "Unseen insect army".

Her strength returned minutely, but it was more than enough to get her legs feeling like legs again. Unabashedly pushing herself into a sitting position, Robin tilted her head back and groaned as she rubbed muscle-wide cramps from her calves. It was an oddly reminiscent feeling, like Robin had done this many a time before. There was an accompanying niggling sensation in the very back of her mind, where Robin assumed her memories lay locked away. It was more of a fleeting feeling than anything, of gentle admonishment and something a bit stronger than fondness. Love? But what kind of love?

_I wonder if I__'__ll ever regain my memories at this rate, _Robin thought, scowling to herself as a migraine threatened. Robin ceased all thought toward deciphering the feeling's origins, in favor of maintaining her cognitive standing.

"Are you all right?" asked Chrom. He had a bracing hand on his sword, as if he was expecting her to attack at any minute. Robin directed her scowl from her legs to the blue-haired aristocrat.

"Yeah. I don't remember the last time I was lying down," she remarked, climbing back to her feet with a protesting crack from one of her knees. That felt familiar, too.

"A few hours ago, in a field, sleeping like the dead" said Chrom, grinning. "Tell me, Robin: did your memory become _more _damaged after defending Southtown?"

Robin swatted at his shoulder, smirking. Beside her, Lissa coughed out disgustedly, "Ugh, I think I swallowed it…"

"Shouldn't we be thinking about food, rather than my horrible memory?" Robin countered.

"Yes," agreed Frederick, the slightest glimmer of amusement in his eyes at Lissa's antics, and possibly Robin's. "I think a little hunting and gathering is in order." Frederick looked at Robin as he said that; the subject of his glare almost cringed at the fierceness of his glare. It almost made Robin want to crawl into a ditch and die a swift death.

_I have a very bad feeling about this, _she ruminated with a slight gulp.

"Now," Frederick continued, eyes never leaving Robin. She knew that whatever he had in mind was no good. "Who wants to help clear a campsite?"

Robin groaned.

_Oh no. I__'__m going to die. _

* * *

><p>Frederick did not only deserve the humorous titles of "Wary" or "Grumpy". Defining him by those two traits was an insult to his…tenacity. The great knight was, above all things, the "Disciplined". Lissa had gone hunting with her brother, almost before the word "Who" had left Frederick's mouth, hand piercing the air to volunteer herself to Chrom's cause. That left Robin (with a pitying smile from Lissa) to assist Frederick in hobbling his violent charger (who did try to trample Robin a bit), and try her very best to remove from the half-overgrown clearing any extraneous rocks, branches, or weeds. Frederick even quipped passive-aggressively about not missing pebbles<em>. <em>He seemed to have a sort of thing about weeds, pointing them out snidely to his young charge whenever she would carelessly step over one. His war against weeds was almost as bad as his pebble obsession. More than once Robin considered filling his armor with pebbles while he slept.

"And _why _won't you let me raze the clearing?" Robin snapped, rubbing her bleeding fingertips together irritatedly. Damn anything anyone had said ever, Ylissean weeds were bloody _sharp. _"It'll save us our backs, with all this damned weed pulling." Robin didn't know about Frederick, but her lower back was all but crying for respite, and she was doing it one handed! Frederick made weeding look easy, in his perpetually spotless armor and insufferable, repetitive attitude.

Frederick gave her a look that would best be suited to scolding a child, or mockingly explaining something to a slow person. He looked down on her, an insufferably smug smile on his face, and said:

"If you're eager to cause a forest fire, then be my guest."

Resisting the urge to set Frederick on fire instead, Robin angrily returned to moving rocks like a possessed ant, muttering venomously all the way. One of her first memories, and it was going to be of bloody fingertips and damn _rocks._

"So," began Robin, eager for some small talk to pass the time, "where is Ylisse located exactly?" When Frederick didn't offer an answer, she pressed. "Is it on an island? Archipelago? Continent? The back of a massive sky turtle?"

That last quip got Frederick talking. "The halidom shares the continent with two other nations: Plegia and Ferox," he said blandly, divulging as little information as possible.

"And you said Plegia is your warmongering western neighbor. So that makes Ylisse the eastern one?"

"Yes."

"And what of Ferox?"

"North."

Robin scowled and unbent herself, glaring as Frederick retreated to his horse to remove what looked like bedrolls from the saddle bags. "Are you going to keep giving me one word answers?"

"Yes," said Frederick.

Robin groaned and just barely resisted banging her head on a tree. She, however, was saved from such a fate by an extremely timely rustling in the underbrush.

"Bear!" came Chrom's joyous shout from the tree line.

Robin looked up, past the campfire that Frederick had put together (with an irritatedly muttered fire spell, courtesy of Robin, to which the scarf generously donated to her healing was sacrificed accidentally, something Frederick was still appalled over) to watch bemusedly as the blue haired aristocrat dragged the enormous carcass of a brown bear behind him. He looked absolutely giddy with the thrill of the hunt, blood crusting his, well, everything. Beside him, Lissa trailed sullenly, coated in her own liberal splatter of bear blood.

Robin couldn't resist quipping:

"Did you bathe with our dinner, Chrom?" she deadpanned.

"No," grumbled Lissa, answering for her brother. "He only let dinner _fall _on me." She turned to Chrom, who was busy skinning the bear with Frederick's assistance. "I'm fine, by the way. Thanks for asking."

"There was never a doubt in my mind you weren't," said Chrom over his shoulder. "And beside, the bear only fell on you a little bit."

Robin raised an eyebrow questioningly. _Only a little? _she wondered, looking between Chrom and Lissa. _Then how much did the bear fall on him?_

"How did Frederick treat you?" asked Lissa as she sat down beside Robin, disgustedly rubbing her blood crusted hands on her stained skirt.

"Oh, you know," said Robin, proffering her sliced fingertips to Lissa. "He was a regular pain in the arse."

Lissa clucked disapprovingly and dug within her voluminous skirts for yet another phial of vulnerary paste. "And what happened to your sling?" she challenged as she slathered the rank paste on Robin's scanned fingertips.

Robin ducked her head sheepishly to avoid Lissa's caustic gaze.

"I may have set it on fire," she said, cavalier. "But only a little bit."

"And _why _did you only do that a 'little bit'?"

"Accidentally."

Robin and Lissa shared childish shoves and laughter as Frederick and Chrom neatly dissected the bear and stuck it on a prepared spit (the culprit behind the large gash from fingertip to knuckle on Robin's hand) to cook over the open fire. Bear meat had quite the... interesting odor. Almost like stale shoes. But nothing compared to its taste. If sweat and old leather had a taste, it was bear meat. Greasy, gamey, disgusting bear meat.

Nothing had ever tasted so delicious.

"Mm," belched Chrom with gusto. "It's been quite a while since I've had bear meat."

Lissa let out a disgusted sound.

"What's the matter?" asked Chrom. "It's delicious! Dig in!"

"No thank you," she snapped. "I'll pass! Gods, you couldn't spear us a _normal _animal for once?" Lissa gestured to Frederick. "I mean, Frederick caught us a crocodile once when we were in the lowland marshes. A _crocodile_!" She broke off into jerky laughter. "You're meddling with the food chain! Right, Robin?"

But Robin was well on her way to her third piece of bear.

"Um... Robin?"

Robin looked up with a confused sound, reflexively swallowing the piece of meat in her mouth. Choking on the half chewed, gamey piece, Robin blushed and wiped grease from her mouth with her sleeve.

"Sorry," she apologized, face red with embarrassment. "It looks like I remember the last time I ate, either."

"See?" Lissa gestured to the cooked carcass. "Someone has to be half starved to eat bear!"

"Come on, Lissa," said Chrom, holding out a skewered piece to his sister. "Eat up. Meat is meat."

"Since when does meat smell like old boots?" exclaimed Lissa. She edged away from the piece, as if putting physical distance between her and it would somehow make it go away. "Never mind, I take it back. Old boots smell better!"

Frederick, per usual, was full of sage advice.

"All of our experiences make us who we are, milady," said the great knight. "Even those we don't enjoy."

"Really?" Lissa said, incredulous. "I don't see you eating any, Frederick!"

Frederick balked as if slapped. Robin snorted as he stammered out, "W-well, I had a big lunch!"

That enticed a laugh from the gathered group. Robin smiled, relished in the warmth of the fire, the camaraderie. It felt like she had been a part of their little ragtag bunch forever. She never wanted it to end. She almost didn't want to remember who she had been before waking in that field.

"Well," said Lissa with an overly dramatic yawn. "I'm going to bed."

"What about first watch, milady?" Frederick quipped, obviously enjoying ribbing the youngest of their group.

Lissa looked scandalized at the very idea of staying up later than she already was.

"I can always take it," offered Robin.

Immediately, Frederick said no.

Grumbling her malcontent, Robin discarded her remains of dinner in an easily dug hole, aided by a simple kinetic spell. She settled off to the side, on the very edge of the firelight, back against a tree trunk, substituting her coat as a bedroll. Her pale shirt was no longer tacky with blood; it had dried to a distasteful crust, finally. The shirt's sleeves were elbow length and fed into the bracers to which the half gloves were connected.

Shivering with the cold, Robin turned her coat around and stuck her arms in the sleeves, leaving the rest to cover her body down to the ankle. Comfortably settled, she propped open the massive tome (which she had removed from her weightless coat pocket) and rubbed soreness out of her slowly healing arm.

The spells recorded on each hand-pressed page oftentimes shielded their purpose, masked it behind a layer of intangibility. It was often as simple as the words forming themselves into gibberish, or whole pages gluing themselves shut so firmly, Robin almost ripped them out in her anger. Or she would have; the pages stubbornly remained attached to their binding, despite how angrily she tugged or yanked.

_So they__'__ll only come out if they__'__re completely devoid of magic, _mused Robin as she flipped to the most familiar portion of the book—the rear. The crosshatched words disassembled themselves and made themselves legible to her. The page from her Southtown exploit was still fixed to the binding, but only just. Most of the letters had been obscured by burn damage, and most of the page had already fallen from the binding. She patted the page thankfully and delicately turned it so she could read the undamaged backside. Robin read voraciously of spells that felt like another extension of her mana. They were so familiar, so powerful (the one she had called to existence earlier in defense of Southtown had a tiny annotation: _mana use high; use in extreme circumstances_) that Robin had almost no doubts that they were hers.

That rose a puzzling question: from everything Robin had observed about herself since waking, she was someone who could barely conjure a simple thunder spell, and collapsed in a faint when summoning higher level magic. And yet, as she ran her fingertips over the dancing script, she could feel the invisible pull between herself and the magic imbued in the pages. She must have been awfully adept to start forging her own spells. Her knowledge must have been preserved in her destroyed memory.

From what little she could glean from the stubborn spell book (as well as thoughts and feelings on the subject matter) such feats were reserved for sorcerers and sages of intensive studies. And yet her magic resonated in the back portion of the spell book, completely autonomous. There was no evidence of any sort of external sorcerer's touch.

_They__'__re mine, _marveled Robin, hand trailing over the back pages. _If these spells are mine. _But the front felt vaguely alien, was supplied and birthed of mana not her own. _Then whose are these?_

"You can read that?"

Robin didn't notice that Chrom had sat beside her until he had opened his mouth. Without looking up, Robin outright ignored a few stubbornly stuck pages, and said:

"I'm trying to figure out if this thing is alive or not," said Robin. "As of now, I'm happy to say yes."

Chrom looked doubtfully between Robin and the object of her displeasure. "I'm not entirely sure you're joking," he finally said.

"I'm not!" Robin exclaimed, gesturing to the massive annoyance in her lap. "Here." She deposited the tome in Chrom's lap, ignoring his surprised "Oof!". "Go on; tell me what you see."

"Is this a joke?" asked Chrom.

"I don't think so," said Robin.

"How can you not be sure—"

"I don't know if I know how to tell a joke yet."

"What do you mean—"

"Just look at the damned book, Chrom."

A little more than miffed, Chrom began to peruse the tome. Robin watched with interest as he squinted at, flipped, and insulted the pages under his breath. Finally, as Chrom flipped the tome shut and it protested the treatment by opening itself again, Robin let out a triumphant "Aha!" and snatched the spell book up before Chrom could do something ridiculous, like use it for kindling.

"Why were you doing that?" he protested. Robin squinted at him; if she didn't know any better, she would have thought Chrom sounded angry, maybe even a little hurt.

"I wasn't doing that," said Robin, brow furrowed in confusion and remorse. "I told you: I think it was the tome."

"The tome?" Chrom looked doubtfully at it.

"We're you able to read any part of it?" Robin patted the cover. "Before it mutinied?"

Chrom shook his head. "Not in the bloody slightest," he said. "The words kept blurring together, and the pages glued themselves together out of spite."

Grinning widely, Robin tucked the book away as effortlessly as she had taken it out of her coat. "It's a good book, then," she said. "It's got personality."

" 'Personality'?" Chrom parroted. "It's rude!"

Mouth agape, Robin held a hand to her chest, feigning insult.

"How dare you insult the book that single handedly saved your life," she protested. "I'm ashamed, milord. You owe it an apology."

Chrom scoffed. "Oh, please. It didn't 'single handedly' save anything."

"It flipped to some helpful pages in Southtown!" said Robin. "I would call that 'single handed'."

Robin offered Chrom a conspiratorial smile as she settled against her chosen tree trunk. It was large, almost comfortable (if one could ignore the parts where loose bark jabbed her in the back). Therefore, it was the perfect place to sleep. She couldn't abide the idea of laying down on the grass, lest a bug crawl in her ear, or something equally as traumatic.

"Don't you have watch?" Chrom asked.

"Nope," Robin elucidated, eyes already shut and arms folded against her chest. She made sure to pop the 'p' as irritatingly as possible. "Your nursemaid still considers me a detriment to your healths. Weren't you paying attention?"

"Frederick said no such thing!"

"Oh, go lie down on an anthill already, _milord._"

Snorting in disgust, Chrom left Robin's side, muttering darkly under his breath about some subject or another.

Once he was on the opposite side of the clearing, facing the still kindling fire, Robin withdrew her tome once more from her pocket and turned to a random page. Well, more exactly, let the irritatingly self-intelligent book choose a page for her. The cryptic writing proved no detriment to her learning abilities, as she easily digested the information on each pulpy page.

Robin hadn't even realized she had nodded off until she did, fingers acting as a bookmark and raised leg acting as a pedestal.

* * *

><p>Chrom awoke straight from a dead sleep several hours later, with an unprincely snort.<p>

Their fire had all but smothered itself. Only a few resilient embers remained truly crackling with some sort of vigor. _Lissa must have been on watch, _he reasoned, eyes drifting to where his sister lay snoring on the ground, wrapped in her bedroll. She was using her arm as a pillow, the blankets of her bedroll gathered around her shoulders. He couldn't help but laugh quietly to himself. Frederick, he was unsurprised to see, was nowhere to be seen (_Probably out scouting the road ahead; no more than a shout away, _reasoned Chrom), bedroll abandoned and folded neatly. Robin lay slumped against the tree where he left her (Stormed off, in all honesty), fingers wedging that irksome spell book of hers apart, even in sleep. Her nose was scrunched, skin around her eyelids tight as she dueled with unpleasant dreams.

He had been startled at first, discovering such a young girl (She looked barely older than Lissa) lying on the ground, as if discarded by whatever calamity had befallen the merchants. He wanted to help her, get her back to the nearest town for help from a more tenured cleric, but Frederick had been stalwart. _"__She wears Plegia__'__s colors, milord. T__'__would not advise such action until we know she is not to blame for this__…__atrocity.__" _

Chrom hadn't even realized the girl was of Plegian origin. Her skin was far too pale and freckled and her hair too dark, brown and braided in portions. The only thing that marked her for Plegian was the voluminous coat she wore, the uniform of all hierophants and mages of the desert country.

He didn't want to have her murdered for being Plegian. He was not his father.

Chrom rubbed a gloved hand against the back of his neck, drawing his mind away from the rabbit hole of self deprecation that would have inevitably followed such a thought. Instead he glanced uneasily about the clearing. There was nothing that should have logically woken him from such a sound sleep.

"Huh," he muttered aloud, more puzzled than worried.

Across from him, Lissa let out a quiet snort and a yawn.

"Brother?" she mumbled sleepily, as if she were still young enough to come to him after a bad dream (Not that that precluded her from doing so now). She levered herself up on one arm, blinking sleep from her eyes. "What's wrong?"

"Sorry," he apologized, voice dropped down to a whisper. "I didn't mean to wake you."

"It's all right," Lissa assuaged, flapping her hand. "Frederick would have skinned me if he noticed I had dozed off." Without giving him pause to retort, she continued: "So what woke you?"

Chrom shrugged noncommittally and moved to his feet, dusting off his legs and behind as he did so. "I don't know," he said. "Something's…amiss."

Lissa's face contorted into a doubtful scowl. "Define 'something'."

"I'm not sure," said Chrom truthfully. "I'll have a look around though, just in case."

Quicker than a bolting rabbit, Lissa was on her feet, scowling at him with enough force to make him take a tentative step backward. Strictly out of self preservation. "Frederick is already out there!" she hissed, loud enough to make Robin mumble something blearily in reply and move her neck into another contorting position. "Don't go and do something stupid!"

"I'm not going to do something stupid!" Chrom retorted bitingly. "I'm going to have a look around!"

"Then I'm coming with you!" Lissa pointed a finger at him warningly. "If there is anything you and Frederick and even _Virion _have managed to teach me, it's to never go off on your own!" She narrowed her deadly gaze on him, making Chrom wonder if clerics in training took any sort of oaths to 'do no harm' or some such. "_Especially _if you think there's 'something amiss'!"

Chrom stared at Lissa, mouth working up and down as he attempted to find some sort of retort to defend why he should go alone. One that wouldn't end with his remains being mysteriously scattered between Ylisse and Valm.

Robin mumbled something that sounded suspiciously like, "Eat the bloody pigeon, you nitwit."

Rolling his eyes heavenward, Chrom let out a deep sigh.

"If I bring up the solo patrol that Frederick is currently embarking on," he began, "you're just going to ignore me, aren't you?"

Lissa smiled disarmingly as she stepped around the low-burning fire, clerical staff in one hand. She looped her free arm through Chrom's and pointed in a vaguely westerly direction.

"Lead the way, Brother Mine," she commanded loftily.

Chrom chuckled and began walking, grinning like a child.

"Yes, milady," he demurred.

They cut through the forest underbrush in the direction Lissa pointed. Despite Lissa's increasingly negative quips in regards to bugs ("_Lissa they__'__re not going to go away because you _asked _them nicely._") and the growing quiet, Chrom found it hard to ignore his bad feeling. That's all it was, after all, a bad feeling to which he had no point of reference for.

If he didn't know any better, Chrom would have assumed it was the bear repeating on him.

"Is it just me," said Lissa, "or is it getting really quiet."

Chrom was happy that one of them had the gall to say it. He had noticed it beginning to quiet the further they got away from camp. In the minutes since they had begun their sojourn, the only thing Chrom had heard was the gnats and other small insects that plagued Lissa. There was a distinct lack of other nighttime creatures. Hells, there wasn't even a snake to be found. It wasn't long before all nighttime noise had fallen silent. Even the wind stopped blowing.

"It's really dark," Lissa continued, warily clutching her staff in both hands. "And where did the birds go?"

"I don't know," Chrom said, drawing to a halt. "Something's wrong here…"

Chrom had heard saying of some sort of 'law', one that Vaike oft misquoted in training and Miriel scoffed as "Pedantic pandering to the subconscious's baseless requirement for superstitious outcomes." For the life of him, Chrom couldn't remember the name, but as the ground shook violently underfoot, he was reminded of it, very quickly and very rudely.

The shaking was enough to begin snapping whole trees from their roots and make their footing treacherous. Chrom immediately threw an arm out to catch his sister by the scruff, before she went tumbling to the ground to be crushed by—gods forbid—falling trees.

"Stay close!" he shouted over the din.

Both Chrom and Lissa looked up at roughly the same time, drawn by the sight of whole trees disappearing into the earth not a league away from where they stood.

_What kind of earthquake does that? _was all he could think.

"Lissa," Chrom said quietly, hand tightening around his sister's shoulder. "Run."

Lissa only looked up at him, hardheadedness giving way to the fear and confusion he felt, but hid better than she did. He could already see the question forming in her mind, the: "_What? No, I__'__m staying with you._" But they had no time for arguments. The ground was opening up, and the destruction was heading toward them at breakneck speeds.

"I mean it! Go!" Chrom gave Lissa a well meaning shove in the right direction. With a frightful yell, Lissa bolted; once Chrom was sure she wasn't about to fall, he followed, just ahead of the earth-renting quake.

The ground let out a massive crack as it began to separate, the upset in the earth enough to rend the forest into pieces before their very feet. Chrom, who was running for his very life, felt intense heat on his whole back as the quake split the very skin of the earth, letting loose a geysering sheet of magma that incinerated whatever trees lay in its wake. Fireballs rained from the heavens, borne from the tumult in the earth, setting whatever hadn't been set alight by heat alone on fire.

"Chrom!" warned Lissa. She was just ahead of Chrom, the ornamental beadwork hanging from her clerical staff clattering together as it swung. Some of the beading and part of the staff was turning black with soot. For a minute, Chrom thought she was going to complain about the damage to it. He didn't notice that the fire had begun to converge, block them in on all sides.

"Where do we go now?!" she shouted, still running pell mell toward the flames, toward the path they had strayed from originally. Chrom looked around, saw that the path had dropped away into nothingness.

_It__'__s either death by fire or death by falling, _thought Chrom macabrely. _I think falling__'__s better. _

"This way!" he shouted, peeling away from the path Lissa was forging, toward the drop off.

"What are you—" came Lissa's hesitant call.

"Just trust me!"

Without thinking, letting out a quick prayer to Naga (along the lines of _"__Please let me survive this fall intact.__"_) Chrom leapt.

For a moment, all he could feel was heat and the gravity-churning sensation of weightlessness in his stomach. Then he was on the ground again, knees automatically bending to accept the impact and disperse it into a semi-graceful forward tumble. Lissa followed, a shrieking "_Oomph!_" heralding her meeting with semi-solid earth again. Her roll was almost uncontrolled; she looked like the barrels Vaike liked to throw downhill by the barracks in that crinoline underskirt of hers. Chrom would have laughed—as per usual when his sister took such a spill—if the situation weren't so dire. Instead, he jogged slightly ahead of her to grab her by the shoulder and metal caging of the crinoline.

"Are you all right?" he asked, once Lissa was righted.

"I felt like a barrel," she grumbled, dusting herself off. She looked no worse for wear; there was a few scrapes on her elbows and hands, when she undoubtedly extended them to break her fall.

Chrom patted her on the shoulder and gently goaded her forward. "Come on, then," he said. "We need to keep moving."

Lissa nodded and broke into a run. At least nothing was broken; a quick look over his shoulder confirmed that the drop had been less than ten feet, but the continuous upset in the earth was only making that gap larger.

He didn't point that out to Lissa, though.

They ran through the underbrush until they came to what amounted to a manmade clearing in the throes of being retaken by the earth. It was there that Chrom came to a stop, glancing behind him at the destruction the quake had wrought. Fireballs continued to fall, igniting whole swaths of forest. He could see whole tracts of land disappear from the earth, falling into some cavern opened by the earth, to be sealed there until the next quake.

"Gods," he whispered, almost awestruck.

Lissa's surprised gasp broke him out of his reverie.

"Chrom," she asked, pointing at something in the sky. "What is that?"

Chrom looked up, confused. The question reminded him of their childhood—the little of it that wasn't wreathed with war—of him and Lissa lying in the fields outside of Ylisstol. They would sneak out more nights than not, avoiding their respective governesses and guards alike. Once lying on the ground (this was well before Lissa came to disgust all things creepy and or crawly and before he knew he could wield Falchion), Lissa would point up at the sky and ask, "What is that?" Chrom, ever the doting brother, would tell her the stories behind the star's names, the shapes they made together, and even invented a few when his knowledge was exhausted.

His mother always told him that some people believed the sky looked back. He wasn't expecting her to be so literal.

Chrom and Lissa stared uncomprehendingly up at the lidless eye that hung, unsupported like the moon. It was a beautiful, unearthly crystal blue, huge pupil vertically separating the iris, like the pupil of a reptile. Like a socket, strange geometric markings and concentric circles maintained a constant counter rotation, like they were supporting it, or were a part of the eye's inner workings.

"I have no idea," he said quietly.

* * *

><p>Robin did not snort herself awake like Chrom did. She was rudely awakened from another confusing dream by the sensation of gravity upending itself in her stomach. With a surprised yelp, she made contact with the ground, biting the inside of her cheek and part of her lip as her arms worked flailingly in her tangled sleeves.<p>

With a groan, she wiped both blood and drool from her face, muttering under hear breath, and lay stretched on her back, working out tired muscles and other miscellaneous cramps. Her spell book had cut almost all circulation to her leg; the sensation of blood rushing back to her nerveless appendage made her whine and tap her foot on the ground.

She wasn't the only one whining, it would seem.

Tilting her head backward so she could look across the clearing, Robin stared confusedly at Frederick's charger. It was trying its level best to escape it's hobbles, whinnying and nickering up a storm.

"Huh," she said, flopping onto her belly to crawl to her feet. "Where's your pain in the arse master?"

The horse showed no sign of understanding or calm. As Robin approached the beast, hands held up warily, she watched it's mouth foam and eyes roll in its skull. Now, she was no horse master (she could perhaps claim some mastery over tactics, or spellwork), but Robin knew that those signs were the hallmarks of fear in an animal.

"Um…" Robin looked around the clearing, just registering that she was the sole inhabitant of their camp.

(She was not outright excluding her spell book as an individual, but until it did something completely mind boggling, like offer some sort of communication, then she was going to count it as a silent semi-sentient being.)

"All right," she said quietly, divesting attention to the frightened animal. "Chrom must have taken Lissa for a walk, and Frederick would never abandon his post—I think—so he must be patrolling the surrounding area…"

Turning back to the horse, Robin extended a hand, making calming noises as she did so.

"I'm sure Frederick will be back soon," she said. "Now just quit your bucking and whinnying, before he blames me for you bolting off."

"Oh? Is that all I should blame you for?"

Robin turned around, question hanging on her tongue as Frederick all but materialized out of the ground. He looked the very picture of righteous fury, arms crossed and hand holding his gleaming lance aloft.

"I'm not sure," Robin said. "I think I might have buried the leftovers, if that's what you're getting at."

"Where are milord and milady?" snapped Frederick, apparently in no mood (like usual) for games.

"How am I supposed to know?" Robin exploded, turning her back on the horse. "I was asleep until all of five bloody minutes ago when your damned horse decided to go crazy!"

That got Frederick's attention. He breezed passed Robin to rest a calming hand on his charger's trembling flank, patting both it and the horses's nose with more affection than Robin had ever seen. Within minutes, the horse had abated it's bucking, but had not stopped flaring it's nostrils or rolling it's eyes.

"Where _are _Chrom and Lissa?" asked Robin, returning to where she had been asleep to put her spell book back where it belonged. Like any sane individual, she did not sleep with her weapons, like a bedmate. A quick retrieval around the tree found her cheap bronze sword nestled back in the helpful loop on her belt.

However, Robin was not expecting to turn around and find the receiving end of a lance pressed warningly against her bellybutton.

"Frederick," Robin said, cautiously moving her hands up in the traditional placating position. "I don't know what crawled up your arse since you first placed me under arrest, but I did not kill Chrom and Lissa."

"How do I know—"

Whatever Frederick was about to say next was lost when the earth decided to revolt.

Letting out a yell, Robin tipped backward, arms pinwheeling to maintain some sort of balance. It failed spectacularly, and she found herself on the ground, groaning as her spine protested the treatment in roughly six different places.

"What in the—" groaned Robin. She pushed herself up on her elbows and blinked blearily at Frederick, who was already saddling his mount.

"On your feet, milady Robin," said Frederick, who had removed his horse's hobbles and saddled it in the time it took Robin to get to her aching knees. "We need to find milord and milady."

On her feet, Robin—more than grateful that the ground had stopped its infernal quaking—turned her head, smelling fire on the wind.

"I don't think you're too wrong on that count, Freddy Bear," she said, hurrying to his side. She accepted his hand and gracefully swung into the saddle behind him, hands finding purchase in the ridges of his still pristine armor.

If they got out of this alive, she was going to ask if it was enchanted.

* * *

><p>Chrom and Lissa looked up at the massive, lidless eye as it began to form bulges within the iris. Hand on Falchion's hilt, Chrom watched with disturbed fascination as the eye literally birthed…<em> something <em>into their world. They were vaguely human in shape, black as shadow, emerging from the film of the eye with an odd squelch and sucking noise. Both sister and brother watched, entranced by horror, as the creatures fell from the eye, more than several storeys up in the air, to the forest floor below, no more than a half dozen meters from where Chrom and Lissa stood.

Chrom knew that any creature of flesh and bone should have been pulverized by the impact alone, but something made Chrom draw his sword, look toward the area where the creatures had landed.

Sure enough, the beings peeled themselves off of the floor with an almost sleepy slowness. Chrom caught a glimpse of red, a hot, glowing red that emitted from the creatures' eye sockets in the stead of eyes. They wore an eclectic hodgepodge of castle forged armor and handcrafted barbarian leathers, and in either hand wielded a stained battle axe.

"Lissa," Chrom said warningly, his grip on Falchion's hilt sure, "stay behind me."

For once, she didn't argue.

With a cry that let loose whatever poisonous mana that was animating the beings, they charged, glowing eyes leaving trails in Chrom's sight. Their run was shambling, as if whatever magic had given them life hadn't quite given them control over their limbs. Unfortunately, one of them had enough coordination to leap and bring its axe before it, intent on cleaving Chrom in half.

With his own answering war cry, Chrom ripped Falchion from its sheathe in a well practiced flourish, sidestepping and bringing the massive broadsword in a horizontal upswing that cut deeply into the creature's side. It landed both beside and behind him, axe penetrating earth.

It let out a gurgling warble and turned it's head around until it was facing Chrom.

Leaving no room for revulsion, Chrom brought Falchion around to intercept the axe as it swung to halve him at the chest. The position was awkward; Chrom had been forced to take a step back from the blow, and he hadn't expected the creature to have such strength behind it's reanimated arms. Grunting with the force of it, he disengaged. However, Chrom didn't give the creature enough time to regroup; he rammed the pommel of Falchion into the creature's skull hard enough to send it sprawling. As it struggled to get up, he leapt into the air and brandished Falchion downward, spearing the creature through the back as he landed.

It let out a wet groan as it died, dissolving back into the poisoned mana that it had been birthed of.

Chrom took only a second to catch his breath, hands clutching Falchion's hilt, blade buried in the ground instead of the creature.

Lissa screamed once, but that was more than enough to jar him back to the moment, remove his broadsword from the ground, and turn on the opponent he had forgotten about in his brief battle.

His sister was crowded against a tree, slightly singed clerical staff brandished before her cross body, a meagre attempt of protection, as she had not begun learning any sort of offensive spellwork (If she ever decided to; she was a notorious master of procrastination). Chrom knew—as instinctively as he had known the creatures were going to survive their fall—that he wouldn't reach her in time.

But damn him if he didn't try.

Lissa screamed again as the creature brought down its axe, in tandem with Chrom's own yell of anguish. But the blade didn't touch her, or the wood of the tree. Surprised enough to stop in his tracks, Chrom saw the broad blade of a young man's sword fending off the massive war axe. It was slung horizontally across the young man's shoulders, edge close enough to his back to begin digging into his cape. But the axe remained at bay. For now.

"Help!" the young man shouted.

Chrom, dumbstruck, said: "Right," as the creature bore down further on the young man, splitting his cape and beginning to bite into the leather of his armor. With a renewed cry, he dashed at the being, divesting it of its head as it turned to face him, and remove the young man of his obstacle. In the moment Chrom's sword pierced flesh, the young man's blade dug into the exposed side of the creature's in a familiar motion.

The being faded into poisoned mana with yet another wet groan.

Chrom turned to Lissa, who was busily wiping her face.

"Are you all right?" he asked, pressing a hand to her shoulder.

"Fine," she said shakily. "I'm fine."

Convinced that his sister wasn't lying, he turned to the young man, who was sheathing his sword. He was dressed primarily in dark blue. His clothes looked too wealthy for him to belong to anything lower than the highest aristocracy.

"That was quite an entrance," said Chrom, wariness in his voice.

The man did not respond.

"What's your name?"

This time, the young man turned, giving Chrom only the slightest glimpse of his youthful face. Any defining features were hidden by the lacquer mask that concealed his upper face. It was well made and shaped into the body of a butterfly.

Chrom expected that he was going to get an answer, and was about to press again for a reply when there was a rustling in the underbrush behind. Turning, sword held in defense, Chrom waited for more creatures to inevitably converge on their location.

He did not expect to see Frederick riding to the rescue, unblemished by the unearthly skirmish, riding double with Robin, who was looking faintly ill.

"Milord!" cried Frederick as he brought his charger to a halt, allowing Robin plenty of opportunity to slide off of the mount and avoid a well meaning flick of the horse's tail. Sputtering on horsehair, Robin came about to take in both brother and sister. They looked just about as haggard as she felt, stained with soot and dirt and a hundred other things.

"Your nanny is a menace with that horse," she said in greeting.

Chrom couldn't help it. He guffawed.

"Horseback riding lessons from Sir Frederick are not for the weak of heart," said Chrom.

Frederick coughed delicately, loud enough to bring attention back to him.

"Are you hurt?" he inquired.

"We're all right," said Chrom, an arm around Lissa's shoulders. "A few close calls, but nothing to be worried about."

Robin watched as Frederick deflated, whatever worry that had been clouding his mind let go by Chrom's assurance. It was almost adorable to watch. Instead of commenting any further, Robin looked skyward, at the massive rip in the sky in the shape of an eye, and grimaced in distaste. It felt like she had ate something rancid, and that something had left its horrendous aftertaste on her tongue. There was a discordant part of her that almost relished it, but it did not stop Robin from spitting on the ground.

It was evil, and she wanted no part of it.

"Are such monsters commonplace in Ylisse?" she inquired, eyeing the surrounding underbrush warily. Over the din of crackling flames and collapsing trees, she could hear the shuffling of the creatures.

"They're not from Ylisse," said Chrom steadfastly. He had noticed Robin's tensing, and had risen his own blade as well.

"Then tell that to them," she retorted. "Because they're starting to look pretty comfortable here."

"Hey," hedged Lissa. "Where's that guy?"

Robin turned to look at Chrom's younger sister, who was looking around the clearing, as if she had misplaced something important. " 'That guy'?" she echoed, eyebrow arched in doubt.

"Yeah!" affirmed Lissa. "The masked man who saved me. Where'd he go?"

Even Chrom looked concerned at that. His attention was terribly divested from the more pressing matter at hand. Robin had half a mind to cuff him upside the head.

Luckily, Frederick was more than happy to do it for her, albeit verbally.

"We can worry about him after we've put these…" Frederick trailed off, at a loss for words. "These _things _to the blade." Hands tightening around the reins of his charger, he goaded the beast into a light trot. "We know nothing about this enemy, so keep your eyes sharp and wits about you."

The remaining three nodded in assent and followed after Frederick on foot. Robin made sure to put Lissa in the middle of their little group, with Chrom and herself providing cover in case anything should assail from the sides. Frederick was more than happy to take point, and Robin was equally glad to let him do so. With her sword in hand, she let her mind coast her seemingly unlimited tactical knowledge, formulated strategies that would hopefully see them safely out of the inferno.

The path they followed was mostly overgrown, but Frederick and his horse tramped down knee high grass and creepers that would have otherwise hampered their progress. More than once they had to circumvent an entire section of wood, due to fissures, lava, or flame. Robin's nerves were slightly more than frayed after using a felled, ancient tree as a bridge over a significantly wide fissure that intermittently belched steam. If she was holding onto her sword a bit tighter than usual, that was her business.

The next section of land that they came to looked more like an overgrown town than anything, or a failed military outpost. The occasional cut stone led the way, piling into low walls, then the skeletal remains of buildings. _No, they__'__re too uniform to be buildings, _corrected Robin.

"Are those forts?" Robin asked, stepping off of the path and trotting the short distance between the party, only to peer into the decrepit archway of one such ruin. It was opened to the sky, walled in on four sides, with a majority of the stonework falling to ruin. Wind whistled around the corners, signaling the lack of habitation.

They were perfect.

"Yes," answered Frederick, remarkably civil. "They are the remains of Ylisse's last war."

Her forehead scrunched thoughtfully, mind churning with strategic possibility. There was a chance that they were crawling with the weird creatures, but it was a chance she was willing to take. "Then we should shelter in them when we can," she said, turning to regard her comrades. "They could prove—"

Robin yelped as a creature lunged from a shadowed alcove with an ear piercing screech. It's weight and speed was more than enough to knock both she and it to the grass. She let out a choked off moan as something collided with her skull, making her see stars and slacken her grip. One of it's hands dug into her throat, cracked fingernails piercing skin and drawing blood. The other wielded a sword as cheap as hers (the same sword that was lying in dry grass beside her, too far away for her desperately reaching fingers to grasp), notched and rusted. It looked like it was about to fall apart any moment, but it was still sharp enough to get the job done.

Grunting with effort, Robin attempted to wedge her knee in between herself and the creature, whose work with the breaking sword was more than adequate. Almost instinctually, she threw up her arm to intercept the falling blade. Robin groaned as the notched and pitted bronze edge bit into her forearm, and didn't move any further.

Perhaps this was the reason why she had chosen to wear bracers, before her memory had been wiped almost clean. Robin had a gut feeling that she had almost lost her arm once defending herself from such an attack.

However, Robin was saved by a well meant lance to the creature's face before the blade could go any further. It perforated the skull and emerging out the back of it's neck. It faded to mana before her, taking with it the sword that had wreaked havoc on her arm.

"Thanks, Frederick," she heaved out, rolling onto her stomach and forcing herself to her feet. She was winded, her arm ached, and she was pretty sure her slightly older, more significant injuries were beginning to bleed in protest. But she was alive.

And shocked to see that her rescuer was not Frederick the Wary, Disciplined, or Aggravating. It was a woman slightly older than she, seated atop her own massive charger, muscular arms partially bared to the elements. The part of her arms that wasn't exposed were covered by treated red armor, from biceps to fingertip. Said armor sleeves matched the red of her armor and the red of her hair. A decorative grey cloth fell from torso to knees, and the neck of her armor was raised to defend her chin and the base of her head.

"Ah…" said Robin stupidly. "You're not Frederick."

"No, I'm not," said the woman shortly. She wasted no time in removing her lance from the creature's skull, even as it faded into mana that made Robin want to retch. "The name's Sully."

Robin nodded dumbly, as if that was an acceptable answer. Bending to retrieve her sword, she held it limply in hand as the woman glared down at her. At a loss for words, she merely nodded her thanks to both woman and horse and scurried back to the group.

"Robin," hissed Chrom, face livid. "That was the most spectacularly _ignorant__—_"

"They're coming again!" shouted Sully.

Chrom broke off his tirade and Robin brought her sword to bear just in time to witness a silver haired main in a lord's regalia running backwards and firing arrows at the approaching creatures. Robin was impressed to see that he made most of his targets before dashing toward the protection that the Ylissean group offered. Robin could have sworn she heard Sully mutter, "Damn, he caught up," under her breath.

"Virion?" spluttered Chrom, once the lordly man was in earshot. "What are you doing here?"

The man chuckled, the noise coming through his nose in a spectacularly snobbish vernacular. "When the good lady Sully departed our humble encampment this fair morning, I could not bear to let her traverse these dangerous lands unaccompanied," he said, humbly bowing to the woman.

"And you, milady!" he cried, looking at Robin in a particular way that had her scowling in confusion. "Life may be long, but attraction is fleeting! You, a beauty unparalleled, should not be waging war alongside these miscreants."

"Who the hell are you?" Robin snapped. The creatures were only shambling closer. Most of them resembled the thing that had attacked her: vaguely human, with armor and some form of weapon. A few, however, were gelatinous, constantly moving creatures that slunk on the ground in puddles to emerge, hooded and long armed. There had to be a dozen of them, at the least. "Never mind, Ruffles. I've got work to do."

While the man called Virion only repeated, " 'Ruffles'?!" with indignation, Robin addressed her group.

"Lances, protect our archer and cleric," she said. "Fall back to the forts if needed, and only if needed. Ruffles here can give you some cover fire. Chrom, you're going to run point with me. We rout the enemy, and we rout them fast." With a disgusted look to her sword, she sheathed it and removed her tome from it's weightless pocket. Maybe she was imagining it, but the pages fluttered happily once it was comfortably tucked in the crook of her arm. "Sully," continued Robin, "let Ruffles provide cover for you. Frederick." She paused to regard the man on his horse. "I don't think I have to tell you twice to protect Lissa?"

"No, milady," said the great knight demurely.

"Good." She turned back to dissect the battlefield. "I want Sully and Ruffles to the west, and Frederick and Lissa to the east. You four will box them in while Chrom and I do the easy part."

"Which is?" Chrom asked.

Robin grinned wolfishly and cracked her tome open.

"Shooting the fish in the barrel, my friend."

The rest of the group seemed content with her plan, all except for the archer, who couldn't keep his mouth shut long enough to nock an arrow.

" 'Ruffles'? 'Archer'?" he parroted boorishly. "I'll have you know, I am not just any archer, but the man who puts the 'arch' in archer! I am myth and legend! I am he who strides large across history's greatest stage! I am the archest of archers, in fact. I am—"

Robin shot him a positively poisonous glare.

"_Getting_ on my nerves," she finished for him. "Now hop on the back of Sully's ill tempered animal, Ruffles, and make with the target practice, all right?"

"Again with the lower class nomenclature," bemoaned Virion. "I ride triumphantly from the jaws of death to rescue so fair a maiden, and am so viciously scorned in return…"

He kept mumbling about his heroic deeds, but Robin had long since stopped listening. She watched as Virion leapt atop Sully's horse at the same time Lissa leapt atop Frederick's. Both knights—both great and regular—goaded their beasts into a charge in opposing directions, as per Robin's orders, hollering their advance with triumphant cries that were echoed only by Virion's screaming.

That left Robin and Chrom, standing side by side, facing the enemy head on.

"Fish in a barrel, you said?" Chrom quipped, Falchion finding balance in Chrom's hands.

"Depends on who's the fish, in the scenario," said Robin gaily. "It all works well in theory. But in practice?" She offered him a shrug and perused the page her possibly sentient spell book had opened itself up on.

_Good. Simple spells. _

"I'll provide your cover," said Robin, already formulating the incantation in mind. "You do your thing and try not to get killed."

" 'Do my thing'?" echoed Chrom jokingly.

"The hack and slash."

"There's more finesse to it than that."

"Whatever. Just do it, milord." Sizing up the enemy, she charged, screaming her own war cry alongside Sully, Frederick, and Lissa's.

Chrom hesitated only a second, to watch the young woman shout, "_Thunder!_" and electrocute two enemies at once. Then Chrom shouted his own call of defiance and ran at the enemy, dissipating the weakened foes with a single slash.

He became lost in the melee, blood singing with battle lust as he slashed, hacked, and carried every thrust and parry through to the next enemy. Where he wasn't, Robin was, safely tucked behind his line of defense, eliminating his foes with a well placed Thunder spell, or staggering the creatures to make them easier targets for Sully or Frederick's lances. Virion's arrows appeared ever so often, in clusters of twos and threes, piercing the beings through the eyes, skulls, or striking legs to bring them down to a limping crawl. Even Lissa was helping, using the butt of her clerical staff to beat off any aggressors to Frederick and his mount.

Chrom marveled briefly at the speed at which Robin had assessed his comrades' strengths and weaknesses, and paired them up accordingly. He turned to offer her a compliment, pride her on her tactical brain.

She was several steps away, tome lost in the tumult, face bloodied and fear stricken as she wielded her blade against a much bigger foe. It towered over her by several heads, consisted of a hulking mass of dusky muscle and furs. Hell, its head was even shielded by a long dead animal, in the fashion of the barbarian clans in the north and west. It held it's massive battle axe aloft, skin bleeding poisonous mana from whatever blows Robin had managed to land before the creature had rid her of her spell book.

Robin, however, was not as stricken with fear as Chrom would believe. She was analyzing and calculating odds, compensating with little rises of her blade. She was prepared with the thing charged at her with an ear piercing screech, a feral roar that had Robin raising her blade to defend. However, this creature was nowhere near as mindless as it's brethren. The course of the war axe adjusted to catch Robin full in the side, before the tactician could even move to counter.

Letting out a gurgling shout, Robin retreated several paces, sword held defensively before her. Her coat had taken a majority of the damage, but the blow had landed on the side that had been mysteriously injured when she was first found by Chrom and Lissa. Blood slicked her side and wetted her trousers uncomfortably, but she held fast, growling her defiance to the creature.

It charged again, howling in counterpoint with Robin, who expertly parried and avoided all blows. Chrom, who was busily beating his way through the throng of creatures (which was thinned to a more approachable and sane bakers' dozen) watched in awe as she rolled, blocked, and all but threw herself backward to avoid the massive power of the battle axe.

The axe came down again, and Robin threw herself backward to avoid it, catching only a glance to her shoulder. She landed full on her back with a thud and a grunt, hand grasping her side and sword held awkwardly upward. The creature shambled toward her, axe moving menacingly in hand as the tactician crawled backward desperately, away from the thing, and toward (unknowingly) her forgotten tome.

"Robin!" Chrom shouted, piercing a creature through the chest and using his boot to remove it before it had fully dissipated back into the aether. "Your spell book! Behind you!" The beings would not let up, would not allow him to protect the woman who was supposed to be providing cover for him. They just kept coming.

Robin, however, had understood the meaning perfectly, and released her grip on her sword. She was next to useless with it in this scenario, anyway. Desperation clouding her mind, she flopped onto her belly and crawled toward her forgotten spell book, which was lying innocently on the tinder quality grass. Groaning with relief, she picked the tome up and turned onto her back once more, fingers skimming through the spell book, half relying on it's possible aliveness to guide her.

"Come on," she mumbled, "please don't pretend not to be alive now. Please."

The pages refused to turn any more. Robin screamed her outrage as the hulking creature kicked her tome from her hand, where it lay on it's perpetually open page in the grass beside her. The creature jammed it's hulking boot into her stomach, forcing her down and earning a pained scream as her fingers reached desperately for her tome. She succeeded in only touching the very tip of her middle finger to the corner.

But it was enough.

Stretching her hand outward as the creature brought his axe down for the final blow, she all but screamed her final spell:

"_Thunder!_"

Magnetism flowed through her fingertips, jolted through her body as if she had been struck by the very lightning she was trying to conjure, and erupted from her splayed hand in it's channeled circle. The bolt struck the creature in the chest with enough force to dislodge the boot and send it flying backward.

Robin had enough sense of mind to roll away from the battle axe as it descended it's downward trajectory. It landed diagonally on the ground, tip near her temple and other part harmlessly buried in dirt. The creature who had wielded the weapon was busily turning back to mana.

Without their supposed leader, the remaining beings (which numbered at five) all but stopped moving, staying still long enough for Virion to pick them off with his arrows. When the battlefield was devoid of any remaining enemy, Chrom called Lissa over to Robin, who lay groaning on the ground, covered in blood, but in good spirits.

"I feel like a practice dummy," she muttered as Lissa plastered her head to toe in vulnerary paste and linen. A once over with some prayers and her clerical staff had Robin sitting up with a groan, assisted to her feet by Lissa herself. "I'm never going to look at them the same way ever again."

"Hush, you," said Chrom to the tactician.

"Hush yourself," she said snappishly, favoring her injured side as Chrom took the burden of supporting Robin from his sister.

Frederick, Sully, and Virion made their ways over to where Robin, Lissa, and Chrom stood. As per usual, Frederick's armor was unsullied. Sully, on the other hand, was covered in minor nicks and dings.

"It seems all the creatures are vanquished, milord," Frederick said, lance at rest beside him. Robin noticed that the creatures didn't bleed, and left only the weapons they were birthed with behind when they died. _How odd, _she wondered. She didn't notice a young man in a lordling's regalia approaching the group until Frederick said, "This young man took care of the rest."

_That must be Lissa__'__s mystery man, _thought Robin again, face scrunched in confusion at the young man's masked face. _And what a mystery he is__…_

"Um…" began Lissa shyly. Until she had spoken, she was busily tending to the remaining party's injuries, from Virion's bruising to Sully's apparently smashed finger. "I never did get to thank you before. So…" The young woman turned bright red with embarrassment. "Thank you. You were very brave."

"You saved my sister's life before," said Chrom. "My name is Chrom. May I ask yours?"

For a minute, it looked as if the young man wasn't going to give answer. "You may call me Marth," he finally said.

The name had no recognition with Robin, but with the others, it registered a certain awe, as if the young man had said he was a god of some sort.

" 'Marth'?" echoed Chrom. "After the hero king of old?"

_I guess I was right when I thought __'__god__'__, _thought Robin.

"Well," continued Chrom, wearing his friendliest smile, "you certainly fight like a hero. Tell me: who taught you the way of the sword?"

Robin assumed the question was hedged due to the prevalence of nobility learning sword craft and the few good and accredited masters who catered to the upper classes. The question, however, made the young man fall back in on himself.

"I'm not here to talk about me," he said levelly. "This world teeters on the brink of an unthinkable calamity. What you saw here was just the beginning of what will follow." Without a further reply, he turned his back on the party and strode back toward the carnage. "You have been warned."

The party stood dumbstruck for the longest time, watching the young man retreat into the tree line. If Robin didn't know any better, she would have said that Marth's voice broke a little on the very last word of his final sentence.

"That was…" she began.

"Wait!" called Lissa, long after the young man had vanished into the night. "What's teetering where now? _Hey, wait! Marth!?_"

"I don't think he's coming back," said Chrom. "That was very strange."

" 'Strange'?" his sister retorted. "_You _didn't see him fall out of the sky, did you?"

"You mean he came from that thing?" Robin asked, pointing at the lidless eye that hung like some sort of possessed moon. "I don't know how safe that is…"

"Never mind," said Chrom. "He's certainly not one for conversation."

"Agreed," said Virion, who was inspecting the length of a scavenged arrow shaft with a casual eye.

"It is apparent that his talents lie elsewhere," said Frederick. He was staring into the dark where the young man named after some hero king disappeared. "I wager that we'll cross paths soon enough. But until then, we should proceed with all haste to the capital."

The rest of their party nodded their agreement. Who knew how far this calamity spread? Chrom felt himself worry for the people of the capital, whom they protected and served. If the capital had indeed been hit by the same quake and subsequent blight of enemies, then their presence would not go unneeded.

"Then let's get a move on," said Sully, bringing her horse around.

"Yeah," agreed Robin, pointing with her right hand. Under any other circumstance, it would have looked quite gallant. Inspiring, even. "To the capital!"

A moment passed, full of snickered laughter.

"What?" Robin snapped.

Chrom helpfully moved her hand toward the left. "Ylisstol is that way."


End file.
